Ville Valo recalls Type O Negative’s influence on HIM and his first encounter with Peter Steele: “He was such a massive fella in every sense of the word”

Ville Valo, the frontman of the Finnish love metal legend HIM, is currently on a solo tour. Valo recently released a new single “Loveletting”, which is a taste of VV’s forthcoming album to be released in 2023. With the album, Valo and his band are also preparing for gigs.

Now, in a recent interview with Metal Hammer, Valo talks a bit more about the influence of goth rock band Type O Negative on HIM and himself.

“One of the first gigs we ever played was for a local promoter who was a mate of mine. He put this weird covers evening together with all these other bands and I think it was Apocalyptica’s first gig, too, they were called Jailhouse Band at that point. We had a few of our own songs already, but decided to play Type O Negative [songs] instead. Apocalyptica played Metallica, obviously! Another band played Rage Against The Machine and another Danzig. We did it twice and it sounded pretty decent. [It] actually taught us to steal the best parts of Type O.”

Valo also says that he met Type O Negative’s late lead singer Peter Steele on a few occasions:

“I did meet Peter Steele a couple of times, but we never became friends. He [was] such a massive fella in every sense of the word, so imposing when he was standing over you. It was at one of the first festival gigs we played in Germany, so I was really new to everything and I remember sitting in the catering area not coming up with the courage to say anything.”