Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Graz /P.P.C. / Austria
Interview date: October 25, 2015
The Portuguese band Moonspell are considered absolute oddballs on the metal scene. They’re known as a band blessed with an innate feel for the refined combination of extreme metal genres, with an imposing dose of melodic bombast and touches of orchestral arrangements, while their dark temperament gets deeper from a veil of gothic elements and the use of programmed sound loops.
Whenever we go looking in Moonspell for a compelling blend of avant-garde, progressive metal with gothic elements, plus the kind of elements Celtic Frost defined way back when (dark metal, in other words), we can’t get around the band’s first pillar: its iconic stage silhouette, the singer of exceptional charisma, Fernando Ribeira.
We did the interview with Fernando in Graz, Austria, at the P.P.C. club, on October 25, 2015, right before Moonspell’s show….
RockLine: How happy are you with how the current tour is going?
Fernando: »October is a tough month for touring. It always has been. Doesn’t matter where you are. Austria, somewhere in Eastern Europe, wherever. But I’m glad that fans of our music keep coming out to our shows even at this time of year and showing us their devotion and love. Honestly, I’m really happy that all our hard work is paying off, with our shows getting better and better attended from year to year. Since this is the second leg of our »Extinct« tour, I’m glad there’s still so much interest in it, and last but not least I’m glad we’re playing here in Austria again, where we haven’t been in quite a while. We already played Innsbruck and were really surprised by the response, yesterday we did Budapest, today we’re here. Every show night is something special, and tonight’s will be too, even though it’s a Sunday and people have to go to work tomorrow.«
RockLine: This year you also played in Slovenia, at the Metaldays festival in Tolmin, where you got moved from the main stage to a smaller stage at the last minute.
Fernando: Yes. That was a tough decision we had to make. In this case it wasn’t our problem, and we could have said it’s none of our business and that we wouldn’t accept a different arrangement than what we agreed on. Plenty of bands would have done that. But we’ve played this festival before and we know the promoter. We were looking forward to the main stage, but in the end it’s the fans who count, and if we hadn’t accepted, the festival could have run into a pile of problems getting the program done, delays above all. However I look at it, the move turned out to be just what we needed. We played in an atmosphere that fit our music perfectly. It was at dusk, among tall trees, the crowd was thrilled and we had a blast. The main thing is that everything at the festival ran smoothly.
RockLine: How do you feel about the new album »Extinct«, how happy are you with it, and what does it mean for Moonspell?
Fernando: We recorded this album very emotionally. We hadn’t planned to put out an album so soon after »Alpha Noir«. While it was coming together, we were still on tour. But we listened to our inner calling. After the tour we packed our bags and flew from Portugal straight to Sweden, to the producer Jens Bogren, and we were completely isolated there. Cut off from the world, from reality. We created without any pressure from the outside. And that’s how our album developed. It’s a special album for us. We tried some totally new things, we used some old ideas whose time had finally come, and for us this album is a step forward. Fans have embraced it, and we play a lot of songs from it live. We’re not young anymore, we’re in our mid-forties, and the most important thing for us at this point in our career is to keep the quality up while building on it from album to album.
RockLine: You actually split your previous album in two: »Omega White« and »Alpha Noir«. Would you say »Extinct« is a kind of mix of the two? Am I right, or am I off?
Fernando: Even though many people see »Alpha Noir« as the main album of the two, »Omega White« is just as important to us, it’s kind of our »closely guarded child«. We didn’t want to mix up the material. We wanted to make one very hard album, start to finish, and that’s »Alpha Noir«. On the other hand, »Omega White« is very important for how »Extinct« came about. On it we came into contact with a much more musical side, with the gothic genre, electronics, rock. That’s how we got an album that isn’t as outright metal as albums like »Memorial« (2006) or »Night Eternal« (2008), or even »Antidote« (2003). Even though Extinct is metallized to a degree, and on the other hand you find gothic elements in it, it carries its own aura, like each of our past albums.
RockLine: You in Moonspell have always loved experimenting with sound and style, from the first album on.
Fernando: I think you bring that into the world with you. That’s how we were born. We started creating in the nineties. Back then a bunch of genres made their way into the metal sphere. Metal absorbed them. Whether it was dark wave, gothic, industrial, symphonic elements, folk music,… Today a lot of that has changed. People live in patterns, they like to work in patterns, there’s a lot of copying. A lot has been said and there are a lot of bands, so it’s harder to tell bands apart than it used to be. As for the album »Extinct«, our motivation was definitely to pour the band’s aura of this moment into it. Those are our emotions, feelings, passions, everything we lived through at the time, it’s an imprint of the band’s pulse during that period. I can say we’re in a midlife crisis, so the album might have even sounded rock-ish to some at times, although that’s not ha, ha, ha,…
RockLine: What would you say about yourself as a musician and singer in terms of artistic growth and maturing over your career, and how does your input show on the new album?
Fernando: For me, the album »Extinct« is a record where I challenged myself as a singer quite a few times. Not only because I’m just doing what I was given, what was laid in my cradle, so to speak, but also because I never intended to become a singer. It’s a talent I discovered only after I joined the band. And I joined it as the singer, first and foremost just to get into the band at all. The band later developed musically, and I developed as a singer alongside it. I’ve also always believed that the vocal delivery is strongly tied to the message in the poetry. There are lines meant for screaming (growling, author’s note), for normal singing, or lines where you have to be especially »fragile«, and I react to that very instinctively. On »Extinct« I approached the vocals very melodically. With them you have to express the mood of a given moment, bring it to life. Together with the music. I don’t want to be just one of those guys in the band who »barks«, which would make our music come out average. The voice is an instrument that lives inside me. For Extinct it was very important that we were in Sweden, where we felt peace. I was isolated and I could truly devote myself to every moment I was living, and so I could bring those moments to life with my vocals effectively.
RockLine: Have you ever felt the urge to put out a solo studio album?
Fernando: »Hmmm…, in the past I guested on plenty of other artists’ albums. Early in my career mostly Portuguese ones, and I also appeared on fado albums. Years ago I also performed in theater and even opera, alongside all the other voices, tenors, sopranos. That always appealed to me and I had no problem with it. As for a solo album, I can say I’ve always been Moonspell and I find it hard to imagine anything else than my voice serving only Moonspell. If I did decide on something like that, it would definitely be an album that wasn’t metal. I’d bring in classical piano, cello, something in the style of Nick Cave. But I don’t feel the need for it. As for everything else, I’ve written a few books in Portuguese, and I translate too, poetry included.
RockLine: Which musicians and artists influenced you back when you were a teenager, to the point where you decided to go down the musical path?
Fernando: A lot of things. If I start with classic metal, that’s Black Sabbath and King Diamond. Later I discovered »underground metal«. That completely took me over. That’s when I told myself I wanted to be in a band. In 1990 Bathory came to Portugal. I was 16 and I was a fan. I met Quorthon, to me he was a very mythical figure of the underground. That’s when I decided I’d like to sing. Later I discovered more and more different music. Peter Steele from Type O’Negative influenced me, that’s a band all of us in the group basically grew up on. And then, for example, Peter Murphy from Bauhaus.
RockLine: Years ago you toured together with Cradle of Filth. Was it possible to get along normally with someone like Dani Filth in the mix?
Fernando: I know what you’re getting at. Every band has its manners, let’s say quirks and habits. There’s also a lot of exaggeration in public about the stories. We in Moonspell and Cradle of Filth met back when both bands were pushed deep into the underground. But we soon built a solid friendship. Dani Filth even has a tattoo on his left shoulder of a motif from our studio debut »Wolfheart« (1995). I know Dani can be a confrontational guy, I know the stories, but at the end of the day, only the band and its music count. And Moonspell got along very well with Cradle of Filth on the shared tours.
RockLine: One classic question to wrap up. What are your plans for the future? Is a DVD or something similar in the works?
Fernando: First we have to get through the current tour in one piece. Then we’ll take a bit of a break in Portugal to catch our breath. Next comes a tour of the US, with Epica along for the ride, and after that there’s still plenty of work ahead, since we also have to do shows in the United Kingdom, Russia, Australia, maybe Japan. For next year we’re planning a special Halloween show in our hometown, where we played 20 years ago, when we had the album »Irreligious« out, which will turn 20 next year. We’re trying to book a date, we’d like to record material for a DVD at that show. At that concert we’ll combine the set from our current »Road to Extinction« tour with a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the album »Irreligious«.
You can read how the Moonspell show went on October 25, 2015, at the P.P.C. club in Graz HERE!
Photo gallery
