Ville Hermanni Valo (born November 22, 1976) is a Finnish singer, songwriter and frontman of the Finnish rock band HIM. He has received the "Golden God" award in 2004 by the heavy metal magazine Metal Hammer. Valo has a baritone vocal range. Valo was ranked number 80 in Hit Parader's Top 100 Metal Vocalists of All Time.Ville Hermanni Valo was born in the Vallila district of Helsinki. His father, Kari, is Finnish and his mother, Anita, is of Hungarian descent. Soon after his birth, the family moved to the riverside community of Oulunkylä where they lived throughout his teenage years. In 1984 his younger brother and only sibling Jesse was born. In his late teens, he worked at his father's sex shop and later moved out on his own when he was 18. As a child, Valo was exposed to the songs of popular Finnish performers such as Tapio Rautavaara and Rauli Badding Somerjoki. In various interviews he has listed as his favourite artists and influences bands like:Iron Maiden, Tapio Rautavaara, King Diamond, Rauli "Badding" Somerjoki, Elvis Presley, Neil Young, Black Sabbath, The Stooges, and Type O Negative.
Valo is frontman of the Finnish rock band HIM, who have released seven studio albums and four compilation albums. They became the first and only Finnish rock band to achieve a gold record (more than 500,000 copies) in the United States. Valo was also the drummer for the Daniel Lioneye project which featured HIM's guitarist Linde Lindström on vocals/lead guitar and Migé Amour on bass. The newest album from HIM, Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice was released on February 9, 2010. He currently lives in Helsinki. HIM released the re-mixed version of Screamworks: Love and Theory and Practice(SWRMXS) in December 2010. Ville Valo will return to the studio with his fellow band mates of HIM in Autumn 2011 to record their new album, the title of which is to be "Until Love Do Us Part".
