We tell you all the essential details of what your favourite bands are up to in 2009 in the Hot 100. Today’s edition lets you know what you can expect from the return of HIM.

“We’re in the songwriting phase, but I always am so it never stops,” explains HIM frontman Ville Valo. “The idea is to write number one hits songs… 13 of them,” he adds with a wry smile. “We’ll figure out who’ll produce it early next year and head into the studio in March or April. Hopefully we’ll be done by the festival season and be able to play new songs there. If the album doesn’t come out in autumn or winter 2009, it’ll be early 2010.”

So what can we expect from the new HIM album?

“I haven’t talked to the band for long yet, but I want to keep the songs all under five minutes and make them really punky and direct. When I say punky I don’t mean sounding like punk, I mean punk in feel. Not so much ear candy. I love over-produced albums but we’ve never tried a more stripped-down, simple approach in a Search And Destroy Iggy Pop and the Stooges type vibe. It’ll still be wanky and melancholy and have all those HIM elements, but just not so much ear candy. Venus Doom was quite a proggy album for us so I’m thinking of doing the opposite with this one.”

And as he explains, being sober has brought out his inner bastard, which we will hear on the new material: “I’m more pissed off and more aggressive. There’s no buffer between me and the real world so I’m the proper cunt I was meant to be.”