The article was originally written by Rae Amitay.
Back in May, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I was given the chance to ask Moonspell’s longtime vocalist Fernando Ribeiro some questions about the band’s new double album, Alpha Noir / Omega White. Well, Moonspell ended up being swept away in a flurry of touring and traveling, so my questions were understandably placed on the back burner…until now. As a result, Fernando’s responses are incredibly current, and we discussed his excitement over the upcoming Katatonia album, nostalgia for the metal scene of years past, the thought process behind Moonspell’s writing, and much more.
MR: So, the new album is actually two albums, Alpha Noir / Omega White. What made the band decide to do this? The titles suggest that the records will be polar opposites, but are there any subtly intentional similarities?
FR: That’s true. Hope it does not get too confusing here but this was the way we found to illustrate what we were writing for this one. It all started by the intention of taking more time and write more songs. Night Eternal was for us an album we did really fast and this time, in between all the heavy duty touring we had for NE, we wanted to approach things differently. What was purely a creative principle at first, became the concept of the album. Moonspell has always been a band whose albums are very diverse within their body of songs. Neither our crowd or us ever had a problem with that, but our thirst for novel processes and also a need to create a more homogenic album was strong enough to lead the things down this path. We wanted to plant the seeds in different soil and watch them grow. We are happy with the way things came out, as we believe each side of us, as a band, grew stronger. The difference between worlds is noticeable yet the band is the same, and I like to think that the albums expand our music with the features of one another.
MR: The Alpha Noir album art is amazingly cool. Obviously, I can see that there is a white swan and a black swan, but can you shed any light on the symbolism behind the two seated characters?
FR: Seth Siro Anton, the Greek artist and singer/bass player of the mighty Septic Flesh did this one for us, continuing a work started on Night Eternal. He had carte blanche to come up with his own visual concept. He only had to follow the lead of the lyrics, themes and songs. We talked a lot over viber about the concept and the way it should intertwine with the figures he was about to create, but all the visual ideas are his. Personally I love symbolic art and I like to have a feast for the eyes and the mind to explore. A certain ambiguity is needed to attain so and for sure Seth likes to play with symbols. My personal reading considers the swans in the cover as being on a second plan. Obviously they can connect to many things, some people even talked about a Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake reference but it was never there for me or Seth, I am sure. What I like are the figures, the way they stand in wait, never disclosing for us if they are going to fight or to engage in a love ritual, pretty much the human factor and doubt, which I address in the lyrics and in the general concept of Alpha Noir. I am very happy with this cover, I told Seth if they were big, printed pictures they could be displayed in a nice museum frame. Covers are so important, they are the first sensual contact with the album on a store, well, if people still go record shopping over there.
MR: The band made a video for “Lickanthrope”, which is basically an alcohol-fueled Little Red Riding Hood narrative with half-naked girls, gambling, and violence galore. What was the thought process behind this?
FR: All I wanted was a masquerade. A gathering of the pack. A pack of literature (and then cinema) outcasts, hanging out in a place where they could be themselves, without having to play a role or wearing a normalcy mask. With Filipe Melo, the director, got in the picture, things moved up several notches. He came up with all the sequences, with all the film tributes (you can see many scenes emulating great motion pictures and great characters), all the scenes. From a simple libertine masquerade, Filipe gave the video a cool twist with a little storytelling, a vicious Little Red Riding Hood and a band of werewolves being the final beast more of a tribute to Hammer movies’ imperfections than the clean Hollywood wolf-men. And he still created a great atmosphere on that improbable place (that yeah, hands down, is a bit inspired by From Dusk Till Dawn’s Titty Twister but we couldn’t afford Clooney or Salma). For all its worth, with its elegant cheesiness and horror film vibe, it was great, for us, to see the final result. Many people wrote us already to know where they can find this place.
MR: Will you be creating any videos for songs from Omega White?
FR: It is done. You can watch it here. It is a really different video but one we always wanted to do because of the erotic goth atmosphere it recreates. We worked with Vitor Castro, another Portuguese director, and he made a terrific job. It’s more of an eighties inspired video, recreating a really cool bedroom where really hot girls are rocking out, making out, having fun, pillow fights, champagne pouring while we play against a white background. It’s all fiction, of course, and maybe only in our mind could a Moonspell song make hot girls act like that, but videos are done so that the band can see their fantasies on screen at least for four minutes. I really dig this one. It has this dark fashion look about it and it gets hot, despite all the assumed clichés that both the band and the director fully embraced. Well, just check it out for yourself and make up your mind.
MR: Is there a specific process the band goes through when writing new material, or does it sort of come about in different ways each time?
FR: We have released albums solid since 1995. Along the way we tried to master a process that can make our ends meet and to please the five personalities in the band. After the stuff is written, the process of enthusing people into listening to the record is a hard one when compared to the pure joy we have writing and being in the studio. It’s hard to explain and it does not necessarily ties up with ego delusion but rather, in our case, at least, an almost juvenile reaction into finding out a way through our ideas and then have them executed on tape. For a musician it’s a leap of faith, but it can be compared to the excitement when you fly in open space or jump between two tall buildings. You might break your neck and legs, but the feeling when you are up there is quite unique and addictive. It all starts with a talk. We share what we are listening to, what I am writing about as far as lyrics, and of course, all the homework our musicians are doing, because everybody loves to write stuff. Then we close ourselves in our studio and spend long hours trying out, going ways, avoiding others until we make a first demo that defines the direction with just a couple of songs. We like to be in the studio playing the new songs as much as we can before recording them. Also, we always pre-produce and arrange with a producer. It’s a fun time when someone from the outside steps into the circle and we are open enough to add some suggestions that sometimes really take the songs further, without altering their main features. Then it’s time to record them, and for the first time around we were able to do most stuff in our own studio, so there was a cool line drawn in between all stages of this process.
MR: Moonspell is going to be on the Barge to Hell in December. What made you guys decide to sign on for that, and what do you think of the ‘metal cruise’ trend that seems to be taking place?
FR: It’s our second time on a metal cruise so we know what to expect. If you asked me this question two years ago, before we joined the 70,000 Tons of Metal [cruise], I’d say I was cautious about what would go on in there as the concept was weirdly entertaining while probably unexpected, to have metal shows on open sea, with a crowd probably distracted by the main forms of entertainment the Majesty of the Seas had to offer. I have to say that, after cruising for Metal, I believe that this a great, great experience where a certain lightness, a vacation mood works wonders with a festival situation while breaking waves. I know what you are getting to, and I share the nostalgia of great club shows, with darkness around and inside us, a certain mysticism even, but I believe that’s mostly over. Metal fans, at least their majority, chose to be entertained above anything else and bands have to go that way. We played many times after Alestorm on a small festival tour in Europe, and sometimes it was hard for us to get across to an audience that has just been taken to the extreme, on a fun basis, with songs about drinking and piracy. We are a quite dark band live and on album, and clubs are our territory. Yet, one must be realistic and if playing in festivals or in a boat is what metal demands from us all these days, we should embrace it, and make the best out of it. I have to say that we had a great time, though but I can’t say that the atmosphere is like watching us in a club in Paris or Helsinki. But in the end it’s good we get to do both.
MR: You’ve got quite a fan base growing in North America. Any plans to do a tour that takes you through Canada or the United States?
FR: I hope you are right. Sometimes it does not get across to us but we are always ready to go overseas and fight the good fight to get more and more fans. For a European band, North America is an essential territory as it influences a lot what happens in Europe. We have played festivals before bands, which were meaningless in Europe, but quite big in the States, so to say promoters, fans and magazines still do look up to what is going on over there. We have done many and different tours in North America but we never broke through, unlike bands such as Dimmu Borgir, Opeth, Septic Flesh, or Lacuna Coil. The only solution is to keep on trying. We had killer reviews and the last 3 albums (including this last one) are getting a cool attention (so the labels say). We are working right now to close a co-headline tour with another European band, around 20 dates, coast to coast, maybe in January or February 2013, as we are pretty much booked up to the end of the year in all of Europe.
MR: Where is your favorite place in the world to play thus far?
FR: I like being on stage, regardless of the place. Off stage, there are places where we get really hospitable treatment by everyone, and some others, we don’t. That’s what makes the difference for musicians, really. I have to say all Latin America is quite awesome as the crowds are big and we are treated really well, but I have been happy in many places, even in some dark corners of the world.
MR: Most bands in your genre come from Scandinavia. How has being from Portugal helped shape and differentiate Moonspell’s sound? Is traditional Fado music an influence at all?
FR: Fact. They’ve had a great setup for rock up there since the seventies. Metal tagged along and they got reputation, which is the best a country can have in musical terms. Portugal is, well, different. Like Spain, or at a less dramatic level, Greece. We all had dictatorships throughout the 50’s, 60’s and great part of the 70’s. People couldn’t talk to each other, left alone gather to listen to The Beatles or Rolling Stones. That was reserved to a certain elite that did not connect with the people on the bottom of the pyramid. The 80’s broke that frontier, and music has grown a lot since then in Portugal. There was room for great national acts, but no international profile. Pop from Portugal? Where? Portuguese rock, Portuguese metal? What? Once, Kerrang! gaves us a generous 4k for one album. We were on a small hype in the UK. But the review stated our country had for rock the same credibility an African country has for ice hockey. That’s the ugly truth. Regardless, all of us in Moonspell have quite a romantic view of our country. And using that as a perpsective it is easy to draw inspiration from a country with nine centuries of history and culture, and that shows in many aspects of our lyrics and songs. Fado is for Portugal what blues is for America. Even if the Fado musical influence is not prominent with us, save for some melodies and acoustic pieces we used here and there, its spirit is there; Dark and melancholic. Curiously enough, the best export from Portugal regarding music is still Fado and…metal.
MR: Moonspell has been active for two decades, and you’ve been a member since the beginning. What’s the most rewarding part of being in the band?
FR: Easy! We turned twenty this year. We formed in 1992, even if we crawled in the scene as Morbid God in 1989. Being in a band I guess is made of both glory and humiliation, and my natural state of mind, even my life, it seems to fall somewhere in between. People call us either a middle of the road band, or on a nicer note, a cult band. For us, it’s reality and has its good and bad points. Its more challenging this way, and we feel more free to make songs without a big band agenda to haunt us. Having it all weighed down, this almost gets philosphical for me at times. The most rewarding part is when a kid reads a book you used to write some lyrics. That’s having influence, and every band craves that more than money or fame.
MR: A lot of people would say that the metal scene isn’t really flourishing right now. Do you agree? How have things changed, for better or worse, since you started your career?
FR: I have mixed feelings about it. Also, I hate to sound I am on a nostalgic trip all the time. But, hands down, I am more impressed by anything Mercyful Fate put out, even more than I’m impressed by recent stuff by bands like Ghost. Even though I am trying to get into them, everyone else seems to see something I haven’t yet. I love the nineties European metal scene. Those bands were the lead I took to create Moonspell and we were still on time to release Wolfheart and Irreligious that were proudly added by the fans into the gallery of that time. I still regard the bands from that breed the most exciting ones. Opeth, Katatonia (already preordered Dead End Kings, there’s such a good commotion whenever they release, it’s just great), Satyricon, Tiamat, Paradise Lost, or Anathema. I know that for many of these bands, in the age of folk and pirate metal, their job is not easy, but they have been built their own room outside the trends. Opeth is just incredible what they do and how the fans follow, is, at least, inspiring being that they do pursue a very unique path. I could say there are a lot of good things coming up, and indeed there might be, but I would lie if I told all my attention is there. My times were different, whatever that might mean.
MR: 2012 seems like it’s going to be a busy year for Moonspell, and you have some huge festival performances coming up. What are you the most excited about?,
FR: Indeed. We have been touring already for the album and it is always a great feeling and a huge task to get people into it. I am generally excited about playing, and only after the shows can I really tell how the experience was. I look forward to our return to Mexico City, since it’s one of the biggest shows of the year for us, and also to the North American tour for all reasons. There are some cities in Europe we always look forward to playing — London, Paris, Helsinki, those are always great shows. But all in all. still being able to do this after 20 years is exciting, while sometimes fearsome with all the traveling, logistics, and expectations of promoters. There is more to playing music than having fun, at least for us, and it’s also sometimes like a game that leads you to strange places. But maybe I am being too mature. We really just want to rock and hope people will still hang onto us, our crazy concepts, and somewhat strange nature. Greetings from Portugal, and see you on the road!
