The Catholic school-educated Val Ium has certainly come a long way since her childhood spent reading and thinking about Jesus and being told by her father to don a wimple and hie thee to a nunnery. It all could have been very different indeed, had she not decided to enrol at a fashion design school in Manhatten with a view to becoming a comedy scriptwriter. A sweet but shy teenager, Val Ium consciously kept herself pretty much to herself until undergoing one of those pivitol, life-transforming experiences that always seem to crop up in these sort of tales ...
          "I had 11 girls in my class and one male who was heterosexual, and he would up being my boyfriend -- of course!" remembers Val. "His attraction to me was that I was innocent and sweet and quiet, so the result of that was, as in most relationshps, that the things you are attracted to initially become the same reasons why you don't want to be with the person anymore, because all the things that you loved, of course, turned to hate. He decided that I was too quiet and too innocent and he didn't like that, so he cheated on me.
          "So I dragged him out into the hallway, from the classroom, the rest of the girls crowded around, and I proceeded to beat him senseless until he cried. And that is how I changed, the turning point of my life. I became a different person, I completely lost my mind. I was a wreck for about six months; I went through some very serious changes that turned me from being a person that people wanted to hurt to a person that could hurt other people."

This was a transformation that, by all accounts, came very naturally to the young Val Ium.
          "It was always there, but I was behaving in a way that I thought I was supposed to behave, and it just came popped out of my head one day like a little baby -- I became pregnant with anger, and I haven't had the child yet!"
          Around this time, prolonged exposure to the fledgling MTV music station initiated Val into a whole new world and an inviting career option -- the opportunity to possibly make a living out of this newly released anger and aggression. Initially occupying a position on the other side of the fence as it were, working for record companies, Val quickly realised that corporate life wasn't for her, yet stuck with it, viewing her stint as a reconnaisance mission, observing how labels fucked bands over and making mental notes not to fall into the same traps in the future.
          "I realised that I wasn't the corporate type, that it wasn't where my calling was, but I learned a great deal from it and I started playing right from then," she recalls. "I suppose I was about 19 when I really seriously started to play, and that's when I met up with Henry (Font, Pist.On singer/guitarist). Actually, he's the only person I can, unfortunately, say that I really get along with, and I hardly get along with him! Its out of necessity, you know?"
          For the best part of a decade hence, Val and Henry have been following a set plan that is nearing its fullfillment with Pist.On, going throught band members who don't get it like most people go through underwear and generally doing the startving artist thing for longer than they care to remember. Which brings us bang up-to-date and on to the rather arresting photographs you see illustrating this piece (these pictures will be scanned soon - Adrian), both of which are products Val Ium's "sick, demented brain".
          "They stem from doing anything to sell records," she admits with admirable frankness. "I'm the female and I certainly don't think anyone would wanna see Henry climbing out of a trash bin naked, so I figured I would sacrifice myself." Which obviously includes covering herself in nothing but police 'caution' tape ...
          "On that entire Marilyn Manson tour I had the 'caution' tape, and so many young males were screaming: 'Take it off!' during the tour that I figured I would, I'd make them happy, I'll give them what they want. Why not? Give the fans what they want, that's the way I see it. Obviously I don't have that much to hide, if you know what I mean."
          See boys, sometimes the 'tits oot for the lads' approach does work ...
          "I can't keep anything in the back of my mind, I can't even keep my mind shut for two minutes. What makes you think I can keep anything under wraps, let alone my own body!" Val exclaims, laughing. " No, actually, what happened is I just to a point in my life where I decided that being a 'good girl' really wasn't benefitting me so I said 'Fuck it! I have nothing to like about anymore!' I'm not getting any younger ... "
          So, is there anything you wouldn't do for your band?
          "Oh absolutely, there's plenty of things I wouldn't do."
          Such as?
          "Can we get back to that later? I can't really think of anything right now ... "
          Umm, nothing then?
          "You have to understand that just because I'm running around in tape on camera does not mean that I've become sexually free, because that has absolutely nothing to do with my morality. Everyone who knows me, know that. I mean it's printed almost every month in Metal Hammer that I never get any sex, so it doesn't matter what I do, it's not gonna help my chances of getting laid. It just doesn't matter."