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And [ Mika Karppinen ] Gas who played with HIM the longest , I haven ' t spoken to him in like ten years . He left the band in a sort of fashion where it was a bit of a shock . All of a sudden , he wanted to leave , and we didn ' t know what to do about it . It ' s funny , you never get good at breaking up , and I think you

original keyboard player . I ' ve also traveled with him a bit on the later tours , so he ' s one of my close friends . He ' s the guy who played the stuff on Greatest Lovesongs Vol 666 . He ' s an OG as they say . Now I ' m starting to wax nostalgic . Thinking about phone calls I made with someone 17 years ago !

IE : That ' s the trappings of nostalgia ! It ' s easy to fall down that rabbit hole . VV : That ' s a rabbit hole you should keep to yourself . It ' s not for public consumption , that ' s for sure (** laughs )! But being on a precipice of something new is a transition . It feels like one leg is in the casket of HIM and the other one is going somewhere else . It ' s an interesting place to be . I ' m glad it ’ s a transition as opposed to trying to burn all the bridges like a lot of people do after a band splits up . They tend to denounce everything they ' ve done in the past and try to reinvent themselves . I think David

HIM , 2017 : Valo ( center )

shouldn ' t . But what you can try to do is be honest and try not to play games . That ’ s what you usually end up doing when you ' re young because you don ' t know how to deal with it all and you make stupid mistakes . Hopefully , you learn from them and get a bit wiser . Wise enough to make new mistakes . But no , I haven ' t been in touch with the guys at all , which is quite surprising . I emailed Linde a couple of times . Then I ' ve been in touch with Mige . And I get to see Antto [ Melasniemi ] quite a bit ; he was the

Bowie was the only person who could do that with integrity . Stick to your guns , and I think it makes all the sense in the world .

IE : It ’ s so refreshing to see you still embracing HIM because it was a huge part of your life and it ' s what many people associate you with . Lots of people , me included , still find so much joy in the band even though HIM hasn ' t released new music in six years . That ’ s why when Gothicia Fennica dropped

it was a huge deal . It was a massive surprise to fans , especially right at the start of the pandemic . At that point , did you know it would lead to a fulllength album down the line or were you just testing the waters ? VV : What else is there ? I was hoping there would be a space for me in music . When we disbanded , I wasn ' t sure how much of my songwriting or how much of my musical identity or personal identity had to do with HIM . So , that was quite daunting when we knew it was gonna end . I didn ' t know how it was gonna feel to be without the band because they had been there forever . When we played the last gig , I felt relieved . It ' s great that we were able to pull it off where we weren ' t at each other ' s throats , at least not all the time . It was more sweet than bitter . It ' s quite special . Not a lot of bands get to end that way . I

thought that was a cool thing . But afterward , I really didn ' t have any plans . I think plan b ' s are for suckers anyway . I ’ m very monogamous when it comes to bands . So , when I was working with HIM it was the only thing I did . I did Agents in the interim doing sort of a palate cleansing , doing a musical 180 . But at that time , it was my one and only thing because I ' m strumming and humming a bit at home to see if there are any ideas . I didn ' t really start planning on anything , and I kind of didn ' t [ plan ] at all with Neon Noir . I didn ' t know if I could play all the instruments . I didn ' t know if I could engineer and record all that stuff by myself , so the first EP was me demoing and seeing how far my wings could take me , my flappy bat wings . They took me deep into the dungeons where the bats rest . I didn ' t know whether I had an album in me , if I had a song in me if people were