U2 and sock-throwing fans are what HIM, Finland's most successful metal band, love most about Ireland, articulate frontman Ville Velo tells Tony Clayton-Lea.
Mention metal music to most people over 30 and they'll probably think you're referring to the hard rock giants of the 1970s, genre pioneers in many ways - Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Blue Oyster Cult, Led Zeppelin - and the bands that set down the guidelines for the kind of metal music the under 30s and particularly the under 20s love to shake their dandruff to.
Yet metal is a curious conundrum, a multi-headed hybrid of so many styles and subdivisions that it's difficult to pigeonhole. On the one hand you have commercial bands such as Metallica - who can on occasion brilliantly fuse melody with muscle. On the other hand, you've got bands such as Slipknot, whose sole object it would seem is to aurally transfer the scary bits of The Passion of the Christ on to CD. Somewhere in the middle of this muddle, waving not drowning in the morass of Metal Hammer and Kerrang! coverage, is Finland's HIM.
HIM stands for His Infernal Majesty, but before the concerned parents of Nobber start reaching for their Complaints Procedural rulebooks, it should be pointed out that the band name is a bastardisation of lead singer Ville Velo's love of reggae and his admiration of Rastafarian leader Haile Selassie - known as His Imperial Majesty to his followers.
"I was also a huge death metal fan," says Velo, "so I transferred a fairly typical death metal word - infernal - to our band name. Through us touring, however, we discovered that the name His Infernal Majesty was too long for some people so we shorted it to HIM. We also thought HIM was such a stupid name - short and to the point, like Kiss."
Velo is one of metal's most articulate frontmen; he's also blessed with the kind of looks and demeanour that make teenage boys want to be him and teenage girls want to, well, be with him - he's a sliver of a stick insect with long hair and startling eyes. Polite to a fault, his knowledge of the English language is accurate enough to detect irony, intonation and inflection, while his accent is a bizarre blend of Oxbridge and fiendish James Bond villain.
HIM's music, meanwhile, is smart enough to have not taken the Slipknot route; at times extremely bland, it can also be exquisitely melodic and, while the song titles can often self-consciously bait moral guardians (Join Me In Death, Razorblade Kiss, Death Is In Love With Us, Your Sweet Six Six Six, When Love And Death Embrace, Our Diabolical Rapture), the content is more romanticised morbidity dressed up for Hallowe'en than anything we need to be unduly concerned about.
"I consider the music to be quite melancholic," states Velo. "All members of the band are from Finland and the country's traditional folk music - indeed, the country's music in general - has always had a dark edge. As for our personalities, we're not like that. We put our inner darkness into the music, and we definitely don't take ourselves too seriously.
"We've all lived in fairly happy families too, so we don't feel that we have a grudge against the world. But I've always enjoyed sad music - it just makes me happy, and happy music always makes me sad. It's a notable Finnish trait, and Russian influenced also, I think. In some ways it's a genetic disorder, because whenever I listen to Black Sabbath it makes me feel powerful, happy, I enjoy life. Listening to REM's Shiny Happy People, however, makes me want to puke."
HIM began life in Helsinki in the late 1980s, at a time when Finland wasn't highly regarded as being an exporter of potentially international rock acts.
Neighbouring Sweden had hit acts with the likes of Abba, Roxette and Europe, but Finland appeared to be bogged down by a resolute stubbornness not to engage with what they perceived as being the English language barrier of most pop and rock. For HIM, it was a case of taking small steps to counteract such a nationalistic attitude.
"We started by getting the right people into the band, writing an original song, maybe play a gig, then a second gig and then to perform outside Helsinki. And when we had completed 100 gigs in Finland we thought maybe we should go outside Finland. Then came Sweden and the German-speaking areas . . ."
HIM's success has broadened significantly from the mid-1990s onwards; their initial snail-paced progress has quickened considerably in several parts of Europe (including a number one hit in Germany, one of the world's biggest record-buying markets). With the friendship of skateboarding guru Bam Margera of Jackass fame, HIM has developed a strong recognition factor in the UK and Ireland. For the moment the US eludes them, but the impression you get is that the band's innate Finnish stubbornness and work ethic will win out for them in the end.
Velo has a particular fondness for Ireland, it seems; partly because of Irish fans throwing not just bras and knickers on stage but socks ("the socks thing is a strange one, but that's good for us, especially being on tour for such a long time. We recycle them, you know, put them in the washing machines"), and also through his love of U2.
"I love that band," he says with something close to emotional vengeance, making him come across more as a big softie than the leader of a parent-threatening rock band. "I don't know what their name means, but listening to One or some of the songs from The Joshua Tree always brings tears to my eyes."
As if this wasn't surprising enough, Velo informs me that he loves The Edge's guitar playing and that Bono is one of his heroes. In a spooky coincidence, the release date of U2's new album is November 22nd - Velo's 28th birthday.
"I'm going to celebrate by buying the record on the morning and listening to it all day." And with that he walks away towards the stage of Dublin's Olympia Theatre to face a barrage of Irish-worn underwear and - oh dear - Irish-worn socks.
HIM's And Love Said No - Greatest Hits 1997 - 2004 is on BMG