MOONSPELL Announces Details Of New Album 'Far From God', Shares Title Track

Portuguese gothic metal pioneers MOONSPELL have released the first single and title track of their upcoming studio album "Far From God", offering a first glimpse into what promises to be one of the band's most defining offerings to date. "Far From God" will be released on July 3 via Napalm Records.

Born out of five years of creative searching, doubt, and ultimate rediscovery, the album marks a powerful return for the band. Far from playing it safe, MOONSPELL deliver a work that feels like a rebirth: darker, sharper, and emotionally unfiltered. Rather than bending to modern trends, the band doubles down on identity and substance, presenting a bold and beautiful statement of gothic metal in its purest form: Dark, romantic, dramatic, and unapologetically heavy.

The first single, "Far From God", sets the tone with burning intensity. A hymn to tragic vampiric love, the song revives the mystique and romantic darkness that once defined the genre, while layered keyboards subtly expand the atmosphere without softening its heaviness. Dense guitars, deep resonant vocals, and dramatic dynamic shifts evoke a timeless gothic aesthetic, restoring danger, and elegance to the narrative of the vampire.

MOONSPELL frontman Fernando Ribeiro comments on the track: "I lost my faith and hope in vampires for quite a few years. They became the clowns of Hollywood, the cheap Halloween shop customs, the old and disgraceful Princes From The East. Until the film director Robert Eggers brought us 'Nosferatu' in 2024 and I was immediately attracted back to that tragic, romantic character who Bram Stoker immortalized in his letters. I wrote 'Far From God' in just one breath and it's our first song about vampiric love in ages. I confess I felt the urge of, together with MOONSPELL, saving the face of gothic metal which became hostage of semi-tuned operatic female vocalists, simpleton and crunchy guitar riffs; and of lyrical content that would make Dracula impale himself with a stake in his bloodless heart. This song is the essence of this album, its title, its video, its soul. And you can even feel the fire of daylight burning into yours and your lover's skin."

Thematically, "Far From God" moves through Baudelairian love, existential guilt, and redemption, Christ-like resurrections and the quiet nobility of creatures of the night. Vampires, werewolves, and sacred symbolism are not escapism here, but vehicles for genuine dark emotion: Solemn, romantic, and unfiltered. The album rejects artificial gloss in favor of fantasy grounded in sincerity, rediscovering the heart of gothic metal in its most authentic form.

"To create 'Far From God', we had to wait for the muse," Ribeiro admits. "Again, she didn't fail us and revealed herself in the most mysterious and beautiful ways to us. It took us five long years of hit and miss, of despairing to the point of thinking we didn't have it anymore, and why should we at all create new music? But I'm glad we persisted. 'Far From God' is a true crusade against the decline of the style in the past few years, a darkly crafted statement that MOONSPELL is here to stay and to claim our throne. No politics, no socials, no intervention, just sickly romantic love, vampires, werewolves so we can all die of beauty, in peace and elegance. Goth bless you."

MOONSPELL's forthcoming magnum opus — produced with Jaime Gomez Arellano (PARADISE LOST, SÓLSTAFIR, GHOST, among many others) — shines like a black diamond, luminous yet shadowed in texture and color, both musically and sonically. It reconnects with the darker spirit of MOONSPELL's classic era while sounding powerful and contemporary. "Far From God" is not nostalgia; it is a statement. A gothic metal hallelujah. MOONSPELL's 21st century "Irreligious". It's not only a powerful reminder that MOONSPELL remain a defining force in the genre they helped shape, but an album that will truly save gothic metal from boredom and predictability.

"Far From God" track listing:

01. Cross Your Heart
02. Far From God
03. Biblical
04. The Great Wolf In The Sky (feat. Alicia Nuhr/Strings)
05. Your Promise Of Light
06. For The Love Of Mortals
07. Our Freedom To Fall
08. Reconquista

The artwork was painted by Eliran Kantor and can be seen below.

On March 7, Fernando took part in a live question-and-answer session on MOONSPELL's Instagram, in which he said about the musical direction of the band's upcoming follow-up to 2021's "Hermitage": "Let's say the people that have listened to it now so far call it the 'Irreligious' [MOONSPELL's second album, which came out in 1996] of the 21st century. And why? Because we had many places to go, so we are going to a place that is more familiar to us. So, it's a gothic metal album. It's an album that doesn't have the social or quite the philosophical tones of other albums. It's a very simple album. It's very melodic. It's very atmospheric. It's very delicate and it's very emotional for us too. It was recorded in Porto [Portugal] during these past few months with Jaime Gomez Arellano, the one that worked with us on 'Hermitage'. There's going to be a lot of clean vocals, yeah. But it's also MOONSPELL. The fortunate people that have listened to it so far, people that work with us, the producer, close friends, they say it's MOONSPELL. And for us it's the best compliment."

Fernando continued: "It's very, very hard to speak about our own music, and why? Because it's an important part of our life and hopefully an important part of your life too. So the best things in life, I think, you fail to explain. It's just a question of feeling. But what we have tried to do on this album was to try to underline some characteristics of MOONSPELL, which are more bordering the romantic and more bordering the existential vibes of our band and of our music and of our life."

Regarding the songwriting process for "Far From God", Fernando said: "It was a difficult album to write. We had a lot of trial and error. I made, like, 50-something [sets of] lyrics. I had 10 album titles, and that's not very common in MOONSPELL."

Elaborating on the long gap between "Hermitage" and "Far From God", Fernando said: "In a nutshell, after 'Hermitage', you know what happened. There was the pandemic, there was a lot of stuff, picking up life, picking up the pieces, I would say, and finding out the direction. So the direction we did, it's what we do the best, I think. It's the gothic metal."

He added: "It has a bit of everything, I have to say, of the MOONSPELL nature. There are songs that are quite dark and a bit disturbing. There are songs that are very uplifting, but I think, really, it's the 'Irreligious' of the 21st century. It's an album that doesn't have anything else than gothic and metal."

On the topic of the decision to lean more into the "gothic" side of the MOONSPELL sound this time around, Fernando said: "I've been listening to a lot of gothic music, not only the old legends, like FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM or THE SISTERS OF MERCY, LOVE LIKE BLOOD or BAUHAUS, et cetera, but also the FRENCH POLICE, TWIN TRIBES, a lot of Spanish goth too. And I really got into that vibe. So, we decided to go that way. It's always hard to choose. We could make a heavier album. We could make an album in Portuguese. We could make an album industrial-like. So that's the price of the MOONSPELL freedom. I think every fan has [their] moments with our music. Some albums were not very well understood at the beginning and then they were catching up. I think 'Hermitage' still has a lot of catching up to do. So let's see how 'Far From God' gets you. I think it's really a beautiful album."

He continued: "To be honest, after this revival of gothic, with especially those bands, more electro bands, TWIN TRIBES, FRENCH POLICE, et cetera, I felt that the 'gothic metal' term was just easily abused. Because a lot of it doesn't have pain, doesn't have love, doesn't have desperation. It's just the flowers, but not the wither flowers. So it's just the stardust but not the dust. So we decided to bring this melancholy back."

As for the cover artwork of the "Far From God" album, Fernando said: "It's made by Eliran Kantor. It's a beautiful cover artwork. I loved it since the day I saw the sketch. It's not probably the cover you expected from MOONSPELL — I don't know why — but, yeah, I think it's beautiful. And if fits really the album. There'll be two or three music videos for this album."

October 26, 2024 saw MOONSPELL perform its first-ever symphonic show, dubbed "Opus Diabolicum", at the MEO Arena in Lisbon, Portugal's capital city. The band made history at this unforgettable live event, adding another magnificent chapter to both metal music made in Portugal and their very own legacy. A year later — on October 31, 2025 — this monumental event was made available to view anytime, available in DVD/Blu-ray, two-CD, black and colored vinyl and digital formats via Napalm Records.

On "Opus Diabolicum", MOONSPELL revisited its classics and its bombastic album "1755" at a one-off, exclusive show and its biggest production to date. The heavy metallic power of the dark metal pioneers met the classical magnitude of the 45-piece Orquestra Sinfonietta de Lisboa (Lisbon Sinfonietta Orchestra) — one of Portugal's finest orchestras — conducted by maestro Vasco Pearce de Azevedo.

In September 2022, MOONSPELL released a very special Blu-ray/DVD and album, a live performance of their latest studio album, "Hermitage", with "From Down Below - Live 80 Meters Deep" via Napalm Records.

"Hermitage" was released in February 2021 via Napalm Records. The LP was recorded, mixed and mastered by Jaime Gomez Arellano (PARADISE LOST, PRIMORDIAL, GHOST, SÓLSTAFIR) at the Orgone Studios in the U.K.

In 2020, MOONSPELL parted ways with original drummer Miguel "Mike" Gaspar and replaced him with Hugo Ribeiro (no relation to Fernando Ribeiro).

MOONSPELL is:

Fernando Ribeiro - Vocals
Ricardo Amorim - Guitars
Pedro Paixão - Keys
Aires Pereira - Bass
Hugo Ribeiro - Drums

Photo credit: Chantik Photography by Sonja Schuringa