The ultimate blend between dark metal and gothic rock, Moonspell’s 13th studio album combines the old with the modern.
The Portuguese band has been shaping their sound throughout three decades, crafting more aggressive, experimental and melodic albums. Far From God is the final outcome of a band that doesn’t stagnate nor feels outdated, and brings back the Portuguese tradition alongside a few modern gothic and post-punk vibes.
M.I. - Lately, Museu de Lamas has become one of the ex-libris of the Portuguese heavy metal scene. Was there any particular reason for choosing that location for your photo shoot?
For now, we can talk about the beauty associated with the place; the way the exhibition is curated for an album with more gothic tendencies. It is a fantastic location.
We thought about it and even took photographs in other places, but I must say that the kindness of the museum director and her openness made our photo shoot easier. I know that Gaerea and Tarantula, among other bands, have also had a musical presence there and went there just to take photographs. In our case, we were extremely well received, and I think the photos turned out incredible.
Many people have been asking us where we took those pictures, and we ended up promoting the Museu de Lamas a little, so that people also visit it, because it really is an incredible space. The inner courtyard had everything to do with our album. It is a real treasure.
M.I. - Moonspell have gone through several musical eras. We have Wolfheart, Irreligious, Sin/Pecado and even Hermitage. If you had to categorize Far From God within one of these periods, which one would it be?
Good question. We have been making albums. Our albums are somewhat guided by the spirit of the time, as the Germans say with the concept of Zeitgeist.
We have made albums that were more hopeful, others more melancholic, some more aggressive and others calmer. They no longer really fit into decades. Nowadays, I think this album is distinct musically speaking, because there can be two or three very different albums within a single decade.
I think that, musically speaking, this album has its place alongside other albums we have had the opportunity to compose, such as Irreligious, because of its simplicity and its very immediate fusion between metal and gothic rock. But it also draws a little from Darkness and Hope, which, for example, is also an album that I think makes sense to mention here.
We also have some parts of Extinct. Fortunately, Moonspell have already made a lot of music and, as such, although our influences are present and will always remain with us, I think we can already go back to our own discography and collect certain elements that help us make our own music. So, it is an album framed within Moonspell’s musical history, but it is an album of this decade because, although there is some classicism, I think it is also a modern album, with modern promotion and production, made by a band between 2025 and 2026, due to its composition.
M.I. - This album sounds to us a little like a mix of Irreligious with a touch of more modern post-punk. What were the foundations for developing Far From God?
Besides drawing elements from Moonspell, there is an album of a band that is very important, which is Tribulation’s Sub Rosa in Aeternum, from 2024. That is because a friend of mine called me when that album came out and asked me if I was singing with them. I was curious, because in fact I had not sung with Tribulation, nor had I been invited.
I really like this Swedish band, I listened to the album, and for me it is a pure gothic metal album, one of the best ever made within gothic metal, and possibly in this era when gothic metal was becoming very Eurovision-like: little pain, little love, little vampirism. I really liked what they did, and I even remember telling Pedro Paixão and Ricardo Amorim that we had to make an album like that. We were not thinking about making one yet, but if Tribulation makes an album like this, imagine Moonspell, with the tradition they have in this musical style. In the end, we let the idea settle.
We had many doubts about the direction we should take. Should we make a more extreme album? Should we make a more industrial album? There were many opportunities to explore. However, I think the feeling within the band, from the music we were listening to, the things we were reading and also somehow watching, was linked to a certain revival of the gothic movement, not in metal, with more recent bands such as Twin Tribes, French Police, among others. I really liked those tendencies, but we come from another background.
And that was how we made the decision, and it was a very important one, namely to frame this style, because in some way we quickly discovered that it is a style quite natural to us. There are styles we come up, like on Hermitage, that are a little more different for us; we have to dig deeper, experiment more, and we wanted to make an album that was not very experimental.
We were somewhat in the aftermath of Hermitage, and we wanted to make an album of songs that did not have many layers, that even had some simplicity in the way it was listened to. I think that is the final result of Far From God, and the people have liked it for that. We are undoubtedly talking about its simplicity, about the proposal we make, both in terms of production and composition.
M.I. - The video for the first single, “Far From God”, shows us a new facet of Moonspell, with great emphasis on a new classicism, where the celestial and earthly realms cross paths. Was the concept taken from a film?
The video was taken from several films. I think the most obvious film is Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, from 2024, but also very much because of the black and white, an element widely used even in older films.
The first Nosferatu is by F. W. Murnau, from the 1920s, and obviously it had to be in black and white. Murnau was a major influence on the German school before he went to the United States to flee the Nazi regime. He made incredible films such as Faust and Nosferatu, for example, and it had a lot to do with that aesthetic. But it also had to do with a film that is now going to be restored in 4K, The Devils, by director Ken Russell. It was a film that was banned for several years.
When I discovered the film, I spoke to Pavel and told him that he would be the director and also handle the cinematography, but that I wanted a more classic video, where there would be a mixture of a certain Catholicism, such as the figure of the priest, but also a certain vampirism. You do not quite understand what is happening there. You understand that it is a religious environment, that there is a guiding figure, the priest, there is a band playing and, if I am not mistaken, we have three nuns. So, there is a small action taking place. It is not a full film, but rather a short film, which we really enjoyed working on.
I think the result of the video was very good. People reacted very well; it already has more than 300,000 views on YouTube alone. It was a video that grew very quickly, and we also wanted to raise the bar. We also have very good videos from Hermitage. In fact, we have always invested a lot in the production of our music videos. We have some that became classics, such as “Lycanthrope”, “Nocturna”, and so on.
I think everything on this new album had to have more quality, be more visual, and be better aesthetically, because the album has such importance for us. We also wanted to incorporate all aspects of the album, from the cover to the production, so that they would be generous for people to see and, whether they liked them or not, admit their quality. Deep down, I believe “Far From God” is one of our best videos so far, and I love the fact that it is in black and white. We do not have many black-and-white videos. I think we have “White Sky”, with a completely different aesthetic, but this really gives the effect we were looking for: more vampiric, more religious too, and it is very well captured in the video.
M.I. - The song “Reconquista” reminds us a little of 1755, rawer and even patriotic. Or is that just a coincidence?
The title gives you something to think about, because it has more to do with the album and not much, or almost nothing, to do with the historical movement of the Reconquista, which formed the borders of our country.
There is even a certain provocation for people, because the word “Reconquista” has lately been used a lot in the wrong way by far-right parties. There is even a movement called Reconquista. Several friends of mine told me not to go down that road, but I had always imagined this song that way, even before the party existed. So, we cannot allow those people to appropriate words.
Therefore, our song is not at all about the historical movement of the Reconquista, nor about a new Reconquista movement, a new crusade to expel Arabs, none of that. In the Middle Ages, when the Reconquista took place, initiated by King Afonso Henriques, people did not speak exactly of that movement either. But it means recovering something.
I think Moonspell have this tradition of the final songs being a little raw. We are talking about “Alma Mater”, “Full Moon Madness”, “The Future Is Dark”, and they end up being somewhat autobiographical, because we always want to convey the message that being in Moonspell is an amazing thing, although nothing is achieved without sacrifice.
If people take the time to read the lyrics, they will see that they are very similar to the vibes of “Full Moon Madness”. Us, the fans, the road, step by step reconquering our place, or what we believe to be our deserved place in the scene and in the hearts of the fans. It is a song that conveys only that feeling; there is no other reading. People abroad have also been asking me a lot about this title. Of course, 1755 is an album about history, and when we find another theme as spectacular as that, we will make another one. But “Reconquista” is a song about Moonspell, about our history.
M.I. - Tell us about the track “Lasthory”, which comes in the box set.
They are demos. “Lasthory”. We did not produce much for this album. We did not want to make many songs. Then, when we started composing, we had gone through that whole hiatus since Hermitage, with the albums, the creative crisis, Opus Diabolicum, the concerts, and the Wolfheart concerts. We also ended up making a mock-up, a demo, and for the box set they asked us for extra content.
I knew that several of my favorite artists, not only in metal but in other styles of music too, have released demos on vinyl. It is a very interesting period because you can see where the songs come from. “Lasthory” is “Reconquista”, without the vocal line, without the final version. It is like a remnant.
The various other songs that have those somewhat curious names are what we call working titles, meaning names that Pedro and Ricardo quickly put there so they would not forget to save those versions on the computer. But Moonspell songs only truly begin to take their final form when I come up with a lyric and a name. From that point on, the story changes, and the songs begin to take shape and acquire that feeling, which is curious.
M.I. – Is it somehow related to the black metal band Bathory?
In a way, it is true, it is related to Bathory, because the song “Reconquista” itself has a strong Bathory influence. Pedro, probably in the riffs he made, has that Twilight of the Gods feeling, which is also present in the vocal line. It has a bit of that feeling, and that is why he called it that.
But, as I said, normally these are things the public never sees. They are things we refer to internally. But I think that is why the box set also has some interest with that bonus material: that journey into the slightly more private universe we inhabit when we do pre-productions or record demos in our own studio.
M.I. - Once again, Eliran Kantor’s artistic mastery on the album cover. Instead of an allegory of a deity, there is a duality between love and loss. Did you choose the cover?
No, I would not even dare. Eliran is a great artist. I called him because I really wanted to work with him back in 2023. I did not even have the album planned, nor the album title, but, in some way, I wanted his collaboration with Moonspell.
Eliran has also known Moonspell for a long time. He has seen us live. He is originally from Israel; we saw each other there too, in Tel Aviv. We also met in Germany, where he currently lives, and we exchanged some ideas. The album title was this, but then the title changed, and so on, and he never sent me absolutely anything. I was the one sending him paintings I liked, things I found while searching on the Internet, and he would not even reply. I started wondering what was going to happen. So, he is a very patient person.
We were getting close to the deadline for delivering the cover, and I told him that I really do not like rushing, but we had to conclude the process. He sent me the cover for Far From God in black and white. All the elements were already there, apart from the colour treatment, and he told me it was a piece he had had for some time and that he had been waiting for the right band to take it out of the archive.
I went crazy over the cover. I think it has everything to do with us. I could never have conceived a cover like that, because I am not a graphic artist, nor a visual artist. He did not want a cover with a cross, nor a man and a woman with a cross, because Moonspell are much more metaphorical, much more poetic than that. He explained the cover through the main figure he wanted, which is a very strong figure in our culture: in this case, the kiss.
And it can really be a farewell kiss, or it can be a kiss of attraction, drawing the male figure on the cover towards the guillotine or towards a death sentence. But we will never know. It is a painting that freezes a certain moment, and Eliran told me that Far From God speaks in its various lyrics of a certain conflict and a certain distance. That was what I wanted to represent, and I think it turned out fantastic.
I think it is one of Moonspell’s best covers, a completely unexpected cover. The only thing I wanted, and that he did, was to make a version without the logo, so we have the complete cover without the logo. The other Napalm Records albums have the logo. I wanted something that could be framed and placed in a museum, such as the Museu de Lamas, for example, and for people to pass by it and see that it is much more than an album cover, that it is a piece of art.
M.I. - There is also the celebration of 30 years of Irreligious. Without a doubt, it is an important milestone in your career.
We are going to have several milestones. We always play Irreligious. I think it is an album that has survived the test of time very well. It has magnificent songs that I particularly like, from “Opium” to “Full Moon Madness”, which are always regular presences as the first and last songs in our set, but we have also played “Herr Spiegelmann”, and we have played “Mephisto” a lot too. And it is curious because now we are making one of the most gothic metal albums of our lives in the year when Irreligious celebrates 30 years. We are more than prepared, and this is going to start happening a lot with Moonspell. Last year it was Wolfheart, this year it is Irreligious, in two years it will be Sin/Pecado, and so on.
I think we will not make the mistake of doing too many concerts, or only retrospective concerts, but from time to time we will play these repertoires in full or make new editions, because we cannot forget that this is also our legacy. A band is always born, or always survives, from a conjunction of three times, or tenses: the past, the present and, of course, the most important one, the future.
I think the future is also built on somewhat from the mixture of our decisions and what we have documented in albums over all these 34 years. It is a major milestone in our career, and now we have albums that are also celebrating that stage, which is something I sometimes cannot quite deal with. Sometimes it seems too surreal that I still remember so well the times of Irreligious, the concerts with Type O Negative, Samael and Rotting Christ, and yet it feels like it has gone by too quickly. We are talking about at least 30 years of these songs accompanying us for an entire lifetime.
M.I. - If you had to choose three albums that fueled the production of Far From God, which would they be?
Honestly, it has to be Tribulation’s Sub Rosa in Aeternum; I would also choose Vision Thing by The Sisters of Mercy; and finally, an album that is not a studio album but a live one, and another one of my favorite live albums: Earth Inferno by Fields of the Nephilim.
For Portuguese version, click here
Listen to Moonspell, on Spotify
Questions by André Neves
