Interview с Moonspell : DARKSIDE.ru

You came to Russia for the third time in March. How was it different from the previous visits to our country? And did the show live up to your expectations this time?

The first time we went to Russia was in 2002 with the “Darkness And Hope” album, and that was a big shock for us. I mean it in a good way, we were very emotional to go to Russia. With the history that you have and us coming from Portugal, we would never imagine us going there for a visit, not even think of playing there and having an audience of people that enjoy our music. So we were very serious to find out whatever we could discover in Russia. And then we found out that we had thousands of fans who are deeply into our songs, who read the lyrics, who think about us. And that gave us a lot of respect for Russia in general, we fell in love with your history and your culture, so it was a pleasure and the chance of a lifetime to be able to visit your country. There are beautiful monuments, and in your subway there is art everywhere. It’s a big empire (laughs), it’s still a big empire, the feeling is still there. The shows – as we were expecting, when they are first organized – had some problems here and there, we also had some problems with the promoter, but that’s in the past. The concerts were good, the audience loved it, so it was a good experience. We didn’t starve, we ate and drank a lot of vodka (laughs), so we’ll never forget that experience. This last time we went with a different promoter, and everyone of us said it was perfect. We never had a promoter, even in other countries, that treated us so well, that respected us so much, that was so concerned about every little detail – if we were on schedule, if the travel conditions were OK, if we were tired, if we needed something. And the shows were way better than we were expecting – and we always expect a good show in Russia nowadays. It was good to play in Moscow in a club, not such a big place like the other times. The sound was better, and we were closer to the audience, which is just great. I hope we will be able to do some more shows, the situation is changing in the East, that is Russia and all the other countries around it. On the same trip we went to Ukraine for the first time, and there you can see they need more development, but I never thought to play there either, so it was great to have that chance.

How do you put together the setlist for the shows? A lot of people were surprised when you played “Alma Mater” in the middle of the set and ended the show with “Capricorn At Her Feet”…

It’s always difficult. We have so many albums, and every time there’s a big fight between us when we start thinking about the setlist. What we usually do is each one of us makes a list of the songs he would like to play, and then we compromise. We see what is more important, what would fit better. We like to make the setlists in which the songs go together well, that are like flowing. It’s like in a theater or in a movie, where a production has to have a certain beginning, a certain mid-point, and a finale, which should be the most exciting for the audience. We’re trying to play songs from the last album, but also to incorporate the classics, and in order not to get tired of the classics, it’s good to change them. For a couple of years we only played “Alma Mater” as the last song, but in this case it starts to sound like a doom song (sings the melody twice as slow as on the studio CD), because we get very tired by the end of the set. So I think it was better to make it different, to put it in the middle of the set, when we’re still fresh and still full of power. And as a song to say goodbye, we use “Capricorn…”, it’s such a beautiful song, it’s very big and epic and emotional. If you hear a song like that in the end after so many other songs from us, it’s gonna be hard to want more, you usually feel satisfied and happy.

Why didn’t you play any songs from the albums “Sin” (1997) and “The Butterfly Effect” (1999) in Moscow this time? What do you think about those experimental records now?

Well, “Sin” and “Butterfly…” are the albums that mark a phase in our career when we had many problems. Before “Sin” we had lost a member (bass player Ares – ed.), and not in a friendly way. This caused us a lot of problems, and we still come across these problems once in a while, it’s like a rock you have in your shoe. (laughs) “Sin”, I think, has great songs, but what came out of this in the studio doesn’t represent us 100 percent. The success of “Wolfheart” (1995) and “Irreligious” (1996) put a lot of stress on top of us, and this is not what we should have done. “Butterfly…” is an album that is an explosion of everything, it’s very experimental. It’s cold, it’s mechanical, and that’s very unusual for us, because we’re Latin people, and when people think of us, they imagine warmth, passion and a lot of heart in everything we do. That’s why when we started we would call ourselves “Lusitanian black metal”. So an album like “The Butterfly Effect” goes a bit apart from all of this. If you mix those songs with the other set - the songs from the new album, “Wolfheart” and “Irreligious” - they don’t fit that well. But you never know, we still would like to play some of those songs – “Angelizer” and “Lustmord”, and as to “Sin”, we like “Abysmo”, sometimes we play it, and “Magdalene” is a good song. But it also depends on Moonspell’s success – if we’re going to be a bigger band in the future, if we headline, and we notice that there’s a big request for some songs from those albums, then it’s a pleasure to be able to play them.

In general, what do you like more - touring or working in the studio?

Studio experience happens every two or three years, it’s always something very special that we do. We’ve developed our rehearsal place to be like a studio, and the rehearsal place is where we go very often, it’s like our little home. It’s where we build everything, it’s where we practice, it’s where we sweat a lot for many hours making sure that when we play live or go to the studio, everything is prepared, so we don’t waste time and make bullshit. (laughs) We’re very concerned about all these details, it’s a lot of hard work. But I like every part of it. I couldn’t tour if I didn’t spend time in the rehearsal room and at home getting ready. For me the best thing I can do is rehearse with the band, compose something new, be excited about it, then come home and have a dinner with my girlfriend or be with my friends and family. It always makes my day better when we practice with the band, play a setlist, and it comes out really good.

When I go on tour, it’s a different reality. It’s like going to the army, the marines – boarding a boat and saying goodbye to your family and wife and kids. What makes this important is that we have a mission, and our mission is to meet our fans, play as good as we can, visit every country and every culture and get the most out of it. We don’t tour in the way many other people do - I don’t want to go to another country and stay in the hotel, then go to another country and stay in a similar hotel, a

nd then forget which country you are in. (laughs) We always like to see different people, get to know their culture, their monuments, the things they like to do for fun. When you come home, these influences only do good for the band. Moonspell are very interested in other cultures, we are very open, just like all Portuguese – part of our culture is sailing, we like to open new countries every time. It’s always fun to discover something new and bring it back and show your friends. I think it makes us better people.

Now it’s time to talk about your new record “Memorial”. This record is probably the heaviest in the history of Moonspell, and there is almost no clean vocals. What was the reason for such changes?

I think we all went crazy! (laughs) Just the name “Memorial” sounds like we’re dead and gone, and this may be our last album. But just like you engrave something on your tombstone when you’re dead, we’re engraving our past with this record, we’re engraving what we’ve done. To do an album like this means that we’re showing the direction we’re going at the moment, that we’re very confident about it, and that we believe in it very much. We cannot ignore that we started as a black metal band, we cannot ignore that our favorite bands are death metal bands. I cannot ignore that I would go to a concert and join the moshpit when I was 13. I would get so drunk by the time the first band was done that I couldn’t remember it. (laughs) I was so excited by just going to that concert. When you turn 30 – I’m the youngest, I’m 30, while the other guys are like 32 or 33 – you start to remember a lot more about your childhood, your teenage days, about what gave you passion and love to start playing music. I get secret pleasure and I’m so proud of being able to put aggressiveness and raw power that you feel when you’re young into an album, and at the same time to put into it everything that you only learn with experience and maturity – the atmosphere, the composition, the structure, the way the album flows from the beginning to end.

In the studio we worked with Waldemar Sorychta again, we hadn’t worked with him for a long time, and there is nothing better to celebrate the reunion with a producer like Waldemar than to have an album that represents everything that we’ve been in love with for so long. He actually produced all the bands we’re all in love with – he produced Samael, he produced Tiamat, he worked with Unleashed, he has his own thrash metal band (Grip Inc.), so he’s very experienced in metal – thrash, death, black. But at the same time, he’s always been a more avantgarde producer, always ready to experiment with more feelings, like he did with “Clouds” by Tiamat. I listened to that album, as well as to “Wildhoney”, every day when I was going to school, and the same is true for Samael. They amazed me, I was thinking all the time about how they created that dark and evil feeling, but at the same time stayed very melodic. They made a difference in my life, and I hope that with this album we can do the same to other people – open their minds for hew horizons, new levels, help them fantasize and dream about other worlds. That’s what we’re here for.

It’s great to see you reunited with Waldemar, but why did you stop cooperating with producer Hiili Hiilesma, who worked with you on two previous CDs, “Darkness And Hope” and “The Antidote” (2003)? Were you dissatisfied with what he did for Moonspell?

Well, I see our career as a big book, as a long story. We did come to Waldemar again, but if it hadn’t been for Hiili, it would have been impossible to have an album like “Memorial”. After “The Butterfly Effect” we were very sad, because the sales weren’t the best, the reactions from the people weren’t the best, so we felt very crippled after an album like that. We needed somehow to recover and reconstruct our vibe, so going to Finland and meeting a guy like Hiili was perfect. He was like a physiotherapist, when you need a bone correction or something like that. He believed in us a lot, and for the first time we had a producer who was very friendly, very emotional and very ready to help us make an album. It was one of the best experiences we had in our lives to go to Finland that is very influenced by rock, rock’n’roll and metal. We went to see their community, there are so many bands there – HIM, Amorphis, Children Of Bodom, The 69 Eyes, Waltari, Sonata Arctica, Poisonblack, Sentenced – and they all know each other, they are all friends. They would lend their instruments to one another, exchange members between the bands, it was a very healthy community, and it was very strange for us. We’re coming from Portugal, where the community is so small that we’re always bitching at each other. The same might happen in Russia, I don’t know. There’s always jealousy and everything, and if you have something, you don’t lend it to anybody, you just want everything for yourself. And I think that’s very unhealthy, music is not about owning something, it’s about sharing and having access to something together, it will only make everybody stronger.

I think the two albums we did with Hiili are very good albums. But yet when we thought about the producer for “The Antidote”, we already asked Waldemar, and he was ready, but we had already promised to do that album with Hiili, and we like to keep our word. “The Antidote” turned out to be a great album, but we imagined if we went back to heavier music, it’s not so much part of Hiili as it is of Waldemar. Hiili is better for rock and epic productions, and Waldemar is a lot more guitar-oriented, he also very atmospheric as far as the sound is concerned, he brings out much more aggression from us. That’s just a question of taste, not quality, because they both have excellent quality, it’s just because of the direction that we wanted to have on this album we had to go with Waldemar.

“Memorial” is getting a lot of great response from the critics, it has even become “album of the month” in Metal Hammer. Was it something you expected, or was it a surprise for you?

It’s a big surprise. We recorded the album in a town called Hagen, nobody knew that we were there, there were no reporters or record company representatives around us. Just like in the days of “Wolfheart”, when we were on our own with just the producer, there wasn’t that much of a hype, there was no excitement around us that we were making a new album. And I’m glad for that, because sometimes good albums come along when people don’t look forward for something to happen, and when they get it, it’s like a big surprise. To have an album of the month in Metal Hammer in Germany and in Greece is something absolutely unexpected. In Greece, we already had an album of the month with “The Antidote”, and it have this title again is amazing, but as far as Metal Hammer in Germany is concerned, we never even thought about it. It’s a very big magazine, they sell a lot of copies in Germany, it influences many other countries, and none of our previous releases had been albums of the month in it. Only “Irreligious” was on the second or third place at the time it came out. We’re very happy about i

t, though I’m not going to buy a Ferrari. (everybody laughs) The reality is that we get the pleasure from seeing recognition of our work, there’s nothing more to it.

Fernando once said that no matter how good may be the second album, it will never be as good as the debut one in people’s eyes. Do you agree with this statement?

With us it’s a bit weird, because “Wolfheart” was the album that impressed the most of people, and “Irreligious” was the album that had more success. It was a very good combination of styles, and probably it was released at the right time – just at the period of the gothic metal eruption. “October Rust” by Type O Negative had just come out, and other bands that already existed such as My Dying Bride and Anathema came into the spotlight again. We got the better part of it - we were part of this community, and we were definitely the band that had the most success in this style of music. We already had Paradise Lost, I remember that “Draconian Times” came out nearly simultaneously with “Wolfheart”, so I think we did a bit of continuation of this theme. In my opinion, “Wolfheart” is a better album than “Irreligious”, but it’s different for different people. The people who are into black metal like “Wolfheart” and don’t like “Irreligious”, but then there are people who got to know us with “Irreligious”, and “Irreligious” is more of our first album for them. Even though they later got to hear all our records, “Irreligious” is still the one that matters to them the most. Everything depends on each individual person and his/her own experience.

I hope the new album “Memorial” will be the first experience for many other people, for new generations, and I also hope that the people who gave up on Moonspell will come back to us because of this album. It’s always people who give bands all the opportunities, the whole business – money, sales, successful tours – depend on the fans. Like I said, being a musician is a full-time job for us, and people tend to expect some results from what they do. If you have a normal nine-to-five job, you always expect results. But we can’t do that. The best we can do is work hard on our music, enjoy our life and try to give good music to people. If the people enjoy it, we’re lucky, and if they don’t enjoy it, we’ll just have to continue trying.

What is the reason for having two cover artworks for “Memorial” – one for the regular edition, and the other for the limited edition?

We’ve always had the tradition of offering something special to our fans. We wanted our fans to have an opportunity to always get something extra. Our intention is to excite people, to make them want to go to stores. Don’t forget that anybody can download music, and if we don’t make something that they can touch, that they can see, that they can smell, why would people bother to go and buy an album? I remember that as a kid I always tried to get a new vinyl or a new cassette, I would collect them, I always wanted to have every album of every band that I liked. But now I think that’s been lost, and we’re trying to bring back that emotion. We had this amazing artwork, and SPV has this tradition of making special editions that are very popular, in Germany they sell better and they are better appreciated. These editions are for real fans who are dying for the album to come out, and I think they deserve something special.

On your previous albums you had several songs in Portuguese. Why aren’t there any Portuguese songs on the new one? Portuguese is a very beautiful and exotic language…

Eeh, it definitely is, but you may have noticed that on the new album a lot of song titles are in Latin – “Finisterra”, “Sanguine”, “Luna”. There are a lot of our Portuguese influences on the album, we’ve just manifested them in a different way. If you think what aspect of the song comes across to people first of all, it’s always the title. I think Latin titles are very exotic for a lot of people, especially I can imagine the Americans are not prepared to see “Finisterra” and “Luna” and all these words, they’re gonna learn a new grammar. (laughs) It’s not in the lyrics, because this album is a lot more aggressive, and I don’t think it will come out with the same power in terms of vocals, because Fernando is screaming most of the time, and for us it always sounds funny if you scream in Portuguese. Whenever we use this language, it’s in a more folkish or erotic way, that’s where Portuguese works better. The choice of lyrics always depends on which direction we’re going. I think it’s a very good balance to have song titles in Latin or Portuguese and to write strong lyrics that everybody can understand. Don’t forget that we’re an international band, we can’t write songs that only the Portuguese community will understand.

We all know that Fernando is a great lyricist. But if you had to write lyrics for Moonspell, what would you write about?

(laughs) I think I would write a lot about reality, life and things that you have to go through and conquer, and I would also talk about the negative aspects of life. I think I will write about the subjects that we are all familiar with – love, hate, pain. But I would have a very different way of writing, I’m not a philosopher as Fernando, and I never really intended to be one. I am very emotional, I have a very big heart, so my lyrics would be like those of a child – very cynical, very direct.

Fernando once said that he would like to write a kind of Moonspell’s history, but not earlier than the group would finish to exist. Have you ever thought of writing your own Moonspell’s history from your point of view?

Oh, the Moonspell history is always on our minds. Sometimes I would fall asleep and be thinking about everything we’re going through, how I would explain it to people or the way I would like the people to be aware of what we did, and how important it was for all of us. For example, if I had a child, I want him to understand what difficulties his father went through, what he desired to do. Fernando, of course, is the perfect person to tell this history, but he always says he will start writing it on the day the band ends. (laughs) People will have to wait until we split up to read this history. And I hope it will take Fernando a while to start writing it.

In your previous interview with our magazine you said that from every culture you try to take some elements and use them in your music. Has Russia somehow influenced you?

It actually did. When we went to Russia after “Darkness And Hope”, we visited some Orthodox churches, and we saw some priests singing. They were doing several harmonies with their voices simultaneously, it’s like their singing had two different levels, that was very unique. They were actually selling CDs in the church, we bought one of them, and Pedro (Paixao, keyboard player) got influenced very much by this CD in terms of composition. And Fernando was obsessed completely by Russian literature and history, he was raving to buy books everywhere, and

I know for sure he was very influenced. The major influence we had was materialized in the idea of poison and remedy, the cold thrust, the image of the antidote in a little glass bottle that you can see on the back cover of “The Antidote”. That was very much the image that we had when we were drinking vodka. (laughs) They brought us these bottles, and they looked like perfume bottles, but they were full of vodka. I don’t know what it was all about, but it really intrigued Fernando, and the whole experience was something special. We were drunk, but it was something more, because we were out of our bodies, we were just flying (laughs), it was all new feelings going round. That was the strongest impression of all our Russian experiences.

Fernando often says that every minute of his life is dedicated to Moonspell. And what about you – do you have time for anything outside the band? Do you still practice martial arts?

Yes, it’s very important for me, because I play drums, and it’s very physical. If I was like Fernando and spend all day writing, doing interviews and thinking over ideas, when it came to playing drums, it would sound like shit. (everybody laughs) I just wouldn’t be able to play the way I play, and I play very hard, very emotionally, I break a lot of sticks, a lot of cymbals and a lot of skins. I sweat a lot, I destroy myself at each and every concert, but that’s the way I like to play. I don’t like to change, I would like to keep that resistance, that focus, not only mentally, but physically, and that’s why I started to practice martial arts. Originally I just wanted to do some sports, but then I got into it professionally – I became a taekwondo teacher, and for a while I was also teaching gymnastics in a local gym. Nowadays I don’t have much time, but I still want to be part of it as much as I can. I still see myself as if I was 16, doing martial arts, kicking people, and I can help people learn it. In martial arts, your students become like your children, and I feel that - I worry about them, I would like to know how they are doing at school or in their life. At the same time, martial arts help me stay young, understand what’s going on with a younger generation. I have students who are almost 16 and I also have little kids, and you learn a lot from that. Everything that I do, I always think of how I can use it for myself, and everything that I’ve learned in my life, I always use it when time comes.

In the beginning, who inspired you to begin studying drumming, at whom you looked and said, “I wanna do it too!”

When I was very young, I was very much into glam. (cracks) I used to like Tommy Lee from Motley Crue a lot. He’s not the best drummer, he’s more of a show-off, and these days he’s better known for his romance with Pamela Anderson than for playing drums. When it comes to more serious music, I used to like the drummer from Van Halen. Later I really got into hard rock, and the people that influenced me a lot are the drummers from AC/DC and Black Sabbath. I even liked Bon Jovi, their drummer Tico Torres was very interesting. But we are talking about the time when I was 8 or 10. When I was 12 to 13, it changed completely. The drummers that I loved were Pete Sandowal from Morbid Angel, Gene Hoglan from Death, Dark Angel and Strapping Young Lad. There was a drummer called Terry Bozzio, he’s about 50, he used to play with Frank Zappa and he’s more of an orchestral drummer. He was a big inspiration for me, too. I liked very much the drummer from Tool, or any extreme drummer, Dave Lombardo from Slayer, for instance, when he would play as fast as he can. (laughs) Nowadays there’s a lot of electronics that drummers use – triggers, special pedals – but I’m more into the old-fashioned way of playing drums.

Did you go to college to learn drumming, or was it a kind of self-education?

When I was very young, I would grab a pair of drumsticks, watch music videos on television, and imitate drummers. I would always hit everything that I could, and that was how I learned by myself. But when I was 10, I started to have snare drum lessons, I joined a marching band, and that was a very good way to learn the basic techniques. When I was 13, I had drum lessons for a couple of months, but I go very bored with learning all these exercises, I just wanted to be in the band. I think what taught me the most was being in the band, because when you’re here behind the drumkit, you might know nothing, but if you’re playing with somebody you have to do something to make a song. (laughs) So you start to have more notion of what people want from you. It’s like in running – when you have somebody next to you, you start to push harder, you give more of yourself. And that’s how I always feel, my best playing is always when I play with people, not by myself. I can be more creative and more relaxed, and do more crazy stuff when I’m by myself, but it’s not so aggressive, emotional and tight, as it is when I play with other people. In this case I’m worried about the song, not about playing the way that will make people say, “Hey, he’s a good drummer!” I don’t really care for that. I like to keep the band together, that’s my job.

We remember that at the after-party in Moscow in 2003 you did not only play drums, you tried to sing…

(cracks) You were there?! Oh no! (everybody laughs) That’s the result of vodka and beer. Fernando went to play drums, he loves to do it, he’s actually learned a lot after 10 years. When he started Moonspell, he wanted to be the drummer, but he didn’t have the money for a drumkit, so he became the singer. When I went onstage that night, it was just for fun. I’m the worst singer ever. (everybody laughs) But it was a lot of fun though. I noticed how good it is to be a vocalist - people are grabbing you! Now I know why people want to be vocalists!

It’s probably a very frequent question, but what happened to your former bass player Sergio Crestana? Already in Moscow in 2003 he looked as if he had very little interest in music…

He does have interest in music, but it goes more for Brazilian music and jazz. We got Sergio in the band, because his playing was very good. But over the years, his personality, his way of being and the stuff he listened to started to disturb us. He was very different from what we wanted, so we started to get unhappy with his performance on our albums and he started to feel a bit lost. We had to separate. But he still plays bass, he has a project with his wife, they perform Latino and jazz and play in casinos and places like that.

How did you find the new bass player Aires Pereira? Did you hold an audition and invite a lot of people, or was he the only candidate?

We did an audition, but he was the only real candidate. (laughs) All the people that showed up did that out of curiosity, you could see that they were very afraid to play in front of us. I think they just wanted to meet us. Some of them had very good instruments, but they couldn’t play at the level th

at we need. Aires was the only person that grabbed his bass and started headbanging and playing at the same time, while everybody else was sitting while playing. They all were very nervous, and he was very relaxed. He even scared us at first, because his playing was so aggressive, but he was the only person capable of learning 18 Moonspell songs in two weeks that we had before the first concert. His first concert was in Portugal in front of 7,000 people, and his first tour was in America with Cradle Of Filth and Type O Negative, so he had a big start, but he worked very hard all his life to have an opportunity like this, and I’m very happy for him, because he definitely deserves to play with us. Everybody loves him, even people from other bands, for instance, Dani Filth from Cradle Of Filth was always talking about Aires and just wanted to hang out with us.

Last year it was announced that you are working on the first Moonspell DVD, but the work seems to be progressing very slow, and there is still no release date. What circumstances slow down the work so much?

When we signed contracts years ago, DVDs didn’t exist, so when we wanted to release one with old band members on it, a lot of problems started to come up. It spoiled a lot of blood for us, it’s very unfortunate, but I think finally these problems are resolved. Now is just the wrong time for it, because it was supposed to come out last year, but things had yet to be developed, and now it makes no sense to release a DVD simultaneously with the new album. The current plan is to release the DVD at the end of the year. We did a lot of hard work, especially Fernando, who spent night after night watching old Moonspell material and deciding what to put on the DVD. I hope when it comes out it will be worth having, because we spent so long working on it. The DVD contains a live show in Poland in 2004, a lot of stuff from the past, some of that from our personal archives, so you can see the other side of the band.

It is also expected to contain all your videos, right?

Yes, that’s also one of the reasons. We wanted the DVD to contain all our videos and as much footage as we can. I think it will be a double DVD, everything that Moonspell done has always been over-exaggerated. (laughs) We take everything very seriously, we do our best for the fans. I always seem to see the DVDs by other bands where the venue looks like shit, where fans are lazy during the whole concert, where there’s almost no extras. But we wanted a DVD that takes a real taste to watch.

Speaking about the videoclips – we’ve always loved your video for “Nocturna”. We’re not sure if it had a great budget, but there’s certainly a great idea behind it. Who came up with the concept of this video?

When we started, we had different ideas for “Nocturna”, we wanted the video to be very dark and gothic, maybe that’s a cliche. But then we hooked up with Tiago Guedes, a Portuguese producer who’s doing a lot of metal videos, for Atrocity, for instance, and who’s very big now. We didn’t have much money, but he had very good contacts, and that gave us the quality of a professional video. We got a lot of people to work for free, and we got cheap prices for a lot of things. The idea came from him, he had in mind the story similar to the “Lost Highway” movie – seeing an accident, then going round in circles and seeing dead people from different accidents again and again. The place he picked up to film the video was very good, it was like a graveyard of cars, and they put all these cars on top of each other behind us, so it looked like a stage of old cars. Tiago’s really cool guy when it comes to doing scenography, building all these decorations around us, using junk pieces of motorcycles and just creating art with them. We learned a lot from him and used a lot of his stuff in our live shows, it was a nice experience.

We have just done a video for “Finisterra”, I think it’s gonna be interesting, but I haven’t seen the video yet. But I have a lot of respect for the video team, for they put a screen behind us and arranged a cool scenery – a stage with dead trees all around, tombstones, it looks like it’s the end of the earth, all this destruction. I think it’s something new, something that people are not used to see from us, it looks very modern, and the idea of the song is very kitch and classic at the same time. I think you will see it when the album comes out. If you go on the SPV webpage, the “making of” is already available there.

As far as we understand, the DVD will come out on your old label Century Media. How can you compare the work of your new label SPV with the situation you had on Century Media? Why did you choose SPV, not any other label?

Our contract with Century Media was for six albums. That’s a long time, more than 10 years. When the contract expired, we wanted to concentrate on the new album, and we didn’t want to worry about labels. We did demos, and our manager sat down to take care of this matter. He sent them to different labels to see which would be the best offer. It’s business, we do have bills to pay, and we want to make sure that we make the right steps in our career. If we don’t make the right steps now, it would ruin the band and our lives, it would become impossible for us to make music. We have to live off music, we can’t worry about other things, we need to be inspired to create good songs. When the time came to do the album and go to studio, SPV came up with a better offer, better conditions for us to work, more possibilities to make our decisions. We control more of the budget and money, we know what we should spend and what we shouldn’t, what’s more important for us. They are the label that is used to work with our type of bands, the have Type O Negative, Biohazard, Sepultura, Fields Of The Nephilim, they have a very big catalog. I think their main interest when they sign a band is to make the best out of it. Century Media is a great label, but they changed a lot. When we joined Century Media, they had Samael, Tiamat, Unleashed, Grave and all these great bands, that’s why we wanted to be part of it. Nowadays it’s very different, I don’t think we have much to do with the stuff they are releasing. But you never know the future, they might change again, and in another 10 years they might want us back.

Have you achieved all of your goals as a musician? Or is there anything else you would like to achieve?

There’s not so much we can achieve, I think I have achieved more than I ever dreamed of. I never dreamed of becoming a professional drummer, playing in an international band and making great music. But if I’m gonna do this for the rest of my life, for which I’m now doing the best I can, of course, I want more success and everything for Moonspell. I see so many bands that don’t really exist, or they exist, but they’re not as big as they used to be. We’ve been around for a long time, and we’ve seen so many bands that missed their opportunity. I would like to do as much as I can to get our music and our message across to people. If you don’t care for recognition and popularity, then you won’t have the money to invest in big productions. When you go to see Iron Maiden or Metallica, you see these big productions, and I still dream of doing something like that with Moonspell.

Special thanks to Maxim Bylkin (Soyuz Music) for arranging this interview

Interview by Ksenia “Wolfin” Khorina, Roman “Maniac” Patrashov
Photos by Dmitry “Ward” Kulikov, Felix Yakovlev, Maria Malyuzhonok
April 6, 2006
5 май 2006 the End

Moonspell

The Memorial Remains