FR: "Butterfly FX" feels like a very complete album because it does not only bring the actuality of Moonspell into a very protagonist level, but on the other hand brings a lot of the stuff we have learned from on the last albums "Irreligious" and "Sin".

MP: What about the famed barriers between metal and gothic? Do they still affect you?

FR: These barriers still exist and they still remain because of these subdivisions of the music. And they might still help people to talk about the different styles but on the other hand it limits them. I think that regardless of music and of definition there are feelings and emotions that can be presented in various kinds of music. And I must relate to the more global point of the feelings than to relate to a formula of making metal or gothic or pop music. Sometimes it is strage but sometimes it is quite rewarding when you can find a kind of dark feeling in such different records like Morbid Angel, Gavin Friday, Moonspell and Laibach. And for me as a music listener it is something positive that I can find feelings and different expressions in music that is not yet catalogued. I think based on this principle people from the goth corner started to listen to metal because the feelings they looked for were there.

MP: So you do have mixed fan crowds?

FB: Yes, not only goth people and metal listeners. It goes from the chemistry teacher to the guy that works in the coffee shop. This is very flattering because it shows us that we can reach a lot of different people. That our feelings are understood that we do not have to be rational, clean or advertised.

MP: What I always loved about Moonspell is that there was a different approach to music from album to album. This time it is very much industrial. How much do Manson, Reznor, KMFDM etc. influence you?

FB: We listen to a lot of stuff and I have a record collection that goes from Sting to Deicide. But if it comes to Marilyn Manson - well to be honest I do prefer the music to the man. He writes great songs and I listen to Marilyn Manson since "Portait Of An American Family" but I always think that Manson and a lot of other bands are so exposed that they take credit for stuff they have not done. Moonspell can relate much more to bands like Tool and Nine Inch Nails than to Marilyn Manson, who is a second generation band. When I listened to "The Downward Spiral" it altered my life, when I listened to "Portrait Of An American Family" it was an excellent album... But it didn't alter my life. And stuff that alters your life eventuelly is the stuff that influences you in music. The industrial approach this time has to do with the influence of Tool and Nine Inch Nails which is eviedent in some songs and with the heavyness of the record. This album is lyrically and conceptwise a mix between an apocaliptyc kind of vibe and existentialism. I think this industrial parts were the cherry on top of the cream. "Sin" was done in 1997 and was more keyboard-orientated, the spine of the songs on "Butterfly FX" are guitars. It is more rock-orientated because it was done in 98/99 - even if a lot of people hate that sound.

MP: Did London, as the place where you recorded the album, make you work differently?

FR: It was the first time that we did the recordings in London. Well, "Under the Moonspell", our mini-EP was recorded in Portugal, but since we are with Century Media all our albums have been recorded at Woodhouse Studios with Waldemar (Sorychta). I think Waldemar is a great guy and a great producer but we thought he had nothing new to offer us for the album. He is much more creative than technical and is maybe a bit exploited with all the Century bands he produces. So we wanted to break the routine and by breaking it already was an influence. We asked a lot of producers and we ended up with Andy Riley. We wanted to record in an oppressive kind of city, in an city that is fast to the point of being inhuman. So we wanted to be there.

MP: You are somebody that puts alot of care in his lyrics....

FR: I think the lyrics are very important when you listen to Moonspell's music. When I speak about the lyrics I like to give people guidelines but not to influence them too much. There has to be some space left for their own imagination. I like to leave the interpretation to people... Still, here are some words on the lyrics.

soulsick Well that's kind of a mental cut up. I'm very influenced by beatnik culture and literature like Ginsberg and Borroughs. So Soulsick was a sleepless night - and Pedro wrote the music in another sleepless night - full of images that influenced me at that time. It was a theatre play by Eugene O'Neil by the Woster Group from New York and it was the best show I ever saw. But it was mainly an abortion of the mind in a sleepless night and then recorded in ten hours.

butterfly fx The title songs. We always tried to have a conceptual and visual component in our music. This is about the very fine line between collaboration and competition between people. It's about the importance that the insignificant has no life to obtain or right to think of growing into bigger stuff.

can't bee This is what we could call without any arrogance a typical Moonspell song. It's about a very deadly mixture between love and death. Sounds like real misery, but it is more about something impossible. I have a very huge doubt when it comes to relationships like love, hate, friendship, what you arereally liking. The person or the image you have from this person? For me these are two very different things: one thing is interpretation and one thing is reality. Yesterday I was online to check our pages and there was - well, an autopsy of this lyric - by a fan (on the Alma Mater mailing list). And I was completely shocked - it was really far away from the truth. Sometimes I don't think people understand what I want to say.

lustmord This title is not to sell records. I always apreciated true crime literature. There was a time when I read a lot about serial killers and their motives and studies them in a psychological way. I always wanted to do a serial killer song with Moonspell, what is exactly what I did with "lustmord". It's about the german serial killer Peter Kürten who operated in Düsseldorf - quite near from where you live (laughs). I've been in that garden already a couple of times and it was strange to renew the feeling. And I put these feelings on paper what goes on in that mind. I think this guy Peter Kürten did different atrocities. He was into slaying young women but on the other hand his "hobby" was to kill swans. So I thought this is strange enough to get my attention.

selfabuse Oh, that is the biggest misconception on the album. It is not about self-mutilation or self-attack or that stuff. I mean I don't want to dramatize it. Everybody had a self-mutilation sometimes when listening to music or having sex... so it's not a big deal. But this is an irony that probabely doesn't work with a band like Moonspell. Is a song about competition, to see who in the music or arts business can sell more records by shedding blood on stage. Sometimes people like Manson or death metal bands put so much strenght in the image that when you go to listen to the music it's terrible. But they still sell so many records due to their image. It's about the secondary things that make you sell records. It seems that people sometimes pay more attention to the image than to the music...

I am the eternal spectator It's a very simple lyric that deals with the big issue of the album: confusion, opposite reality. What is your place in the world? Are you a vigilant or someone that is creative? It is about human nature that we cannot conform to the small realtity that we have.

soulitary vice It is a strange song and an embarrasing subject but people that go on tour really know what I am talking about. Soulitary Vice started off as a title that was inspired by Anton LaVey. He wrote a chapter in the Satanic Bible about masturbation as something that is not only a physical thing but more global. Something that can be ritualized almost as sex itself without a second component. So I wanted to write on this topic that masturbation is nor only a need but could be something superior. Masturbation can be an art. It can be a more intimate and independant kind of sexual love. So I came up with this lyric where masturbation is not a manipulation of a second person.

disappear here It's a direct influence by Brett Easton Ellis author of "Less Than Zero" and "American Psycho". It's a line from one this books and my interpretation to this. In my opinion the combination of words make the mood very scary. It's one of the softest songs on the album and one of the most suffocating feelings - especially live.

adaptables I had this title already a couple of years. I used to say it's about the quality that makes man different from the animal: that is to adapt to conditions be it the weather or whatever... It's the most evident song about the pre-millenium change and the capacity of adapting to it. If you want to be yourself 24 hours a day, you couldn't. First because you really don't know what is your self and you can't communicate without adapting yourself.

angelizer I have a dream machine, that is an electronic lamp that repays in the same speed as your brain waves and that replaces the vigillant waves with the better waves that allow you to dream while in the vigillant state. The magic with the dream machine is that you are concious but always remember the experiences that you have through the dream machine. We were preproducing the album here in our garage in Portugal and I was looking for an effect and I eventually read on the Q-base page the word "angelizer" and I thought wow! what an amazing name. When we were looking for the effect again the word wasn't there. So I must have misread it or had an hallucination or whatever. But it was a great name and the lyric is about a weird dream put down on paper still awake due to the dream machine.

tired Well, Moonspell are tired and I am very tired, too. Not of playing music, not of having the privilege of expressing my feelings. But sometimes tired of the interpretations that go with it. When we came up with "Wolfheart" it was new, there was nothing to be compared to. With "Irreligious" it started and with "Sin" it became really hard. With "Butterfly FX" it goes on to be hard. Sometimes our fans and the press don't give a chance to the music. It has almost become a Moonspell-tradition. And I'm tired of all this misinterpretation and tired of being pinned down - so this is a song about these feelings. The weird thing is, that people that neither like "Sin" nor "Butterfly FX" are crazy about tired.

k "k" was just the thing that came into my mind, when I listend to the song because we were not supposed to put it on the album. But we were also not supposed to put Alma Mater on "Wolfheart" because we thought it would not fit. And then it became one of our most popular songs... so we put k on the album - as it is so violent and we planned it as a kind of decompression chamber at the end.

MP: When listening to the album it seemed that you become more down-to-earth with your lyrics. It's not about wolves and vampires any more but about feelings.

FR: I probabely have more time and maturity now to think about feelings. But even when writing about vampires and wolves I always tried to write about things that impressed me in my life. The experiences I have can be real and unreal at the same time. I'm not saying that I'm schizophrenic and into paranoia. But I can go from saying the stuff on "can't bee" to saying the stuff on "Vampiria". I think when you start you have to be more epic and mark much more territory. And when you look at the line from "Wolfshade" to "tired" you realize somewhen that it is all about yourself. But generally I think that my lyrics are very tranparatent

MP: What else changed throughout the years?

FR: In the beginning we were just five plain guys from Portugal. We were completely scared when we were picked up at Düsseldorf airport because we never ever flew before. We did not know what was expecting us. And then we were thrown into touring and all that stuff. So "Wolfheart" was a very important album and something nobody was anticipating. Nowadays everything is different. We are much more experienced. It doesn't mean that we know everything better now, but at least we know it different from then. And we definitely know what we put in our albums.

MP: After four records and endless touring has your attitude changed somehow? Have you adopted a more "rock'n'roll lifestyle"?

FR: When we started off we didn't know how to play our instruments, left alone what was expecting us in the music business. We have a lot of theories around that. The first three or four years of touring, bringing out an new album each year, we never had the time to test that or to even think about that. We were absolutely reduced to getting from the tour bus, playing the show, getting in the tour bus, drive to the next venue and start it all over. And it was a very fast and hard school. But for more than two years now we all live from Moonspell, we do nothing but music. But this does not mean that we spend our money on drinks, drugs or parties. We want to have the passion profile in our music and the professional profile as well. We are one of the few bands that practise every day in the morning - much to the shock of out colleagues on tour! We still like to have a drink with a nice girl but this would not impress us to the point where it becomes a lifestyle.

MP: But isn't this boringly grown-up? Where have the stars with big scandals gone?

FR: Maybe many things don't shock nowadays that much. If you have told literally everything in afternoon shows by your neighbours it isn't shocking any more if it is done by a so-called rockstar. Nowadays it is very cool to be gay, a few years back you could be kicked out of music business if it was known. Of course it helps selling records if you are involved in sexual ambiguity. Put it this way: I was never the person that had to live the excess to feel the excess. I'm quite free that I never wanted to be a musician or a rockstar - it happened incidentally. So by being a musician I don't feel that I have to fill up into this concept of wrecking hotel rooms... Making music has also to do with responsibility and we may sound a bit old-fashioned but we want to keep things also personal and private.

MP: You just returned from your first US-Tour? What impressions did yu take with you?

FR: First I got the impression, that the people over there are much easier bored. And way faster than over here. They don't know what to do because everything is already fabricated... Sometimes I really regret to live in Portugal because of our delay in some aspects. But believe me, I'm also glad that this delay exists because some times this whole civilisation exaggerations don't come to Portugal. Over there everything is so huge - but it is also the most empty country I ever saw. The other impression is that we were painted such a dark picture of playing only in front of ten people but carreerwise it was definitely a very good experience. The audience was openminded and they really liked not only "Wolfheart" and "Irreligious" which is what people buy over there. They like a wider range of music and like us for all our albums. The least people we played for were 120 and we even had some sold out shows...Although in the US we are clearly an underground band.

MP: So it was a clever move to host your own webpage as. Anybody can get an impression via the web.

FR: Actually we were the second band here in Portugal that had an own website since the mid-nineties. It was in 1995 that our current webmaster approached me and asked if he could do a website for us. So I said "why not - if we have a fanclub why not also a website"? And a lot of people knew us only because and through our website. We alwys promoted ourselves. We are very self sufficient: we got all our contracts alone, like the deal with Century Media or Direct promotion. If our time with Moonspell is over you will not find us weeping in the street or whatever.

MP: After Ares was *hrmpf* more or less kicked out of the band you were in need of a bass player. Where and how did you meet Sergio?

FR: Well, I did not meet him myself. In Portugal we are a big band, we are in the charts there and everything. So when Ares left we got a lot of calls from people that wanted to play bass in the band. Sergio was someone that didn't fit into the Moonspell concept at all: he was playing in a band at the Casino, he was playing Jazz, he was playing Bossa Nova. He knew rock but the heaviest music he has heard was Led Zeppelin. And then we had an award show here in Portugal, something like the Grammys, and we had to find a bass player for that event. And a real famous keyboard player in Portugal, that plays with every pop-rock band here, knew Sergio. And he asked Pedro if he had anything against Brazilians, and Pedro said as a joke: "Yes, I hate them". But eventually Pedro met Sergio and then he played with us. But it all came very naturally and not forced. This is why Sergio stuck with us: he was not forced, he did not impose himself and he is an excellent musician. And he brought a whole lot of new conceptions of rhythm and groove into the band.

MP: How important is it for you to express yourself in other things than music?

FR: Some friends of mine have a small, very independent theatre group, what means that there is absolutely no money involved. So I adapted three plays from a Spanish comic writer and we have done three performances. We called it "costume comedy" and it dealed with everyday stuff, that pisses you off. It was a very low-budget thing: I did the sound, the light, showed the people to their places...I am always involved in new stuff because I know a lot of people from the theatre, from underground cinema in Protugal and especially from underground literature - my biggest kick! And they are very interesting, because believe me sometimes musicians are a little bit boring...

MP: What about your future plans?

FR: We were supposed to have the release party here in Portugal but unfortunately this was not possible. My most immediate future plan is to get things going again here in Portugal because things were a little bit frozen and they can go on a bit further. In January we will start a headliner tour through Europe with Kreator and Witchery. And in March hopefully we will come again to the US. Generally we want to do a lot of touring this year. We want to give our new record more time than we did with "Sin". And I want to finish writing my novel. Also I will start contributing as a writer to an underground literature magazine called "the Bible" here in Portugal. And that's it.

MP: Fernando, thank's for the interview.

© MEGALOMANIAC PRODUCTIONS 1999

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