Portugal’s reigning metal powerhouse Moonspell have returned with the glorious Far From God, the follow-up to Hermitage (2021). Legendary frontman and original member Fernando Ribeiro delivers masterful performances on this must-have title, alongside Ricardo Amorim, Pedro Paixão, Aires Pereira, and Hugo Ribeiro.
The mainman states, “I think that Far From God is one of the most important albums of our career, if not the most important.” He emphasizes the record’s depth and sense of strife, then lends insight into its genesis. “It took us some years before we wrote the first song that we ended up using. I think we were waiting to be romantically inspired … Sometimes, we just forced ourselves to play. The process was trial and error. I had a lot of lyrics and album titles. We also had a lot of songs, a lot of demos.”
Ribeiro further reflects, “We had to first answer the question for ourselves, ‘Why make new Moonspell music?’ And once we found the right style and our mojo again, it was actually very easy to proceed. We really wanted to go full gothic battle again but with a twist.” He shares, “We don’t compose remotely, even though we don’t all live in the same town. We get together in our studio—Three of us handle the songwriting. I write with a computer, and they (Amorim and Paixão) write with the guitars, the drums, and the bass. Sometimes I just stop them in their tracks and say, ‘I have an idea now. Let’s try some vocal lines.’”
The titan recalls, “We did the pre-production with our producer, Jaime Gomez Arellano. He had a vision of how the album should sound.” Gomez, a leader in his field who has collaborated with Moonspell in the past, read through Far From God’s lyrics and accompanied the outfit in their own studio before moving on to his renowned Orgone Studios for the actual recording. Moonspell and Gomez also engaged in constructive discussions about the material. Ribeiro smiles, “He’s a very personal, up-close producer. We’ve become very good friends.”
At Orgone, Moonspell focused on precision, rather than improvisation, considering the compositions had already been painstakingly brought to their full potential. Ribeiro clarifies, “It was our chance to repeat to exhaustion whatever we needed with drums, with guitar, with bass, with the vocals, with the arrangements, with the strings. Gomez was very, very much a perfectionist.”
Ribeiro celebrates Moonspell’s success with Gomez, “He created a powerful, modern sound but with a very classic touch. It reminds me of the early Danzig productions or The Sisters of Mercy, even though they are more electronic than us. It’s just very to-the-point. It has no artifice.” On “The Great Wolf in the Sky,” Spanish guest artist Alicia Nurho provides the said strings. Ribeiro notes that she’s friends with Gomez, who selected her because “He is a producer that searches for quality.” Moonspell’s helmsman continues, “She’s a bit of a genius. She recorded, like, a full orchestra, even though we just needed a string quartet.”
Despite the work entailed, Ribeiro confirms that recording his vocal tracks with Gomez was very pleasurable. Although Ribeiro mostly opted for clean singing, he did incorporate harsh vocals too. He explains, “I try to use vocals like the deep baritone more on the verses to tell the story, and, when the emotion is stronger, to use the shouting or the growling.” Ribeiro comments, “I think the secret to keeping your voice and being a decent singer is in the power of your mind; the best feature is a strong mind. I’ve been singing live for 33 years, and I think nowadays my voice is better than ever.” He attributes this to his experience as well.
The esteemed vocalist, who doubles as a published author, enjoys the cathartic nature of crafting lyrics and more, “It’s a privilege and the perfect opportunity to get rid of your ghosts, to get rid of your fears. That’s exactly what I tend to do when I’m writing my own poetry and especially when I’m writing for Moonspell …” Ribeiro remarks. “I believe the biggest thing is to let yourself go and not to be afraid of sharing through the words.”
A true intellectual, Ribeiro reminisces, “I thought about being a philosophy teacher, not a singer in a metal band that tours internationally.” He touches upon one of the many ways that his cerebral pursuits tie into Far From God, “I was very inspired by Nietzsche to write this title, because Nietzsche, besides being a philosopher, was a philologist, and most of his philosophical body of work is composed of him going to find out about Greek words in their original context and bringing them into contemporary thought to see what was wrong, where we have deviated from the original concept. And it’s the same for me with Far from God. You know, God is a big figure in everyone’s life, for the good and for the bad.”
On the topic of violence in today’s world committed in the name of religion, Ribeiro summarizes, “All of these things that are happening are signs that these (bloodthirsty) people are not acting on behalf of a god. They’re truly far from the original intention of peace, or harmony and brotherhood. I think we have never been further from God than we are right now.. I think people should learn more about religion in order to understand the world.”
Ribeiro, whose quest for erudition began even before he enrolled at the University of Lisbon, offers a glimpse into his journey as a thinker, “I had Aleister Crowley, Éliphas Lévi, and LaVey on my shelves. I then replaced them with Feuerbach, Nietzsche, and Kant (a lot of the German philosophers), but also with Voltaire, Spinoza, etc. They help me to better understand the world, society, religion, politics, psychology. So, I always keep a philosophy book around me.” Ribeiro picks up a copy of Peter Sloterdijk’s Prometheus’s Remorse (a 2022 lecture published in 2024), which he is currently revisiting. He informs us that he still reads the old masters as well as more contemporary minds like Slavoj Žižek and the late Gilles Deleuze.
Owing to his admirable aesthetic judgement, Ribeiro enlisted acclaimed artist Eliran Kantor for the task of supplying Far From God’s cover art. He reached out in 2023 “without any music planned, or even a date for the album because I love his work. I think it’s out of this world.” According to Ribeiro, despite much communication, only after he sent Kantor the studio result of Moonspell’s latest sonic endeavor did the latter reveal, “‘Well, I have this piece already done. I was waiting for the right band to use it.’” Ribeiro adds, “And that was (what became) Far From God’s cover.’” At that point, it was a black-and-white sketch, whereas the final product is a painting executed in “full color, almost Flemish technique, which creates a lot of motion.”
Ribeiro praises Kantor’s contribution, “It’s something that could be framed and put on a museum wall, and people would give it attention. There are just a few elements: a kiss, a man, a woman, and a guillotine. The way Eliran explained it to me was mind-blowing—He said, for him, Far From God is about estrangement, and there’s nothing more personal, or nothing that can change you more, than the promise of a kiss. He also told me that he never knew himself if the woman in the picture is saying goodbye to her lover or if she’s luring him into the guillotine, and I think that’s really beautiful.”
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Photo and painting courtesy of Napalm Records
