MOONSPELL's FERNANDO RIBEIRO Explains 'Far From God' Album Title: 'It Means A Lot Of Stuff'

In a new interview with Australia's Jaimunji, vocalist Fernando Ribeiro of Portuguese dark metal pioneers MOONSPELL spoke about the band's latest album, "Far From God", which was released on July 3 via Napalm Records. Regarding how he landed at the title for the record, Fernando said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "It took some time to get there. I had plenty of titles. I was a bit at loss with the titles. I had this kind of concept until one fine day I just picked up these three words and put them together and I thought they were very striking. And then I went to do what's trying to get back to what inspired me. So I got back into my studies of philosophy that I did many years ago here in Lisbon University. And I understood there was a very important philosopher to me and for a lot of people in the world, Friedrich Nietzsche. And I had the chance and the privilege of studying him a bit further, because Nietzsche's very sexy for people to say 'God is dead' and the Superman, but he's so much more than that. There's so much more in between the lines. So he was someone that studied the mother tongue, the languages, the original Greek, and his body of work was him getting back to the natural, original sense of the words. And then he picked up the words and compared it to its own century back then. And the obvious conclusion is that we were very far away from the original concepts of love, virtue, kindness, et cetera. And back in his own century, it seems like Nietzsche was predicting the future because it's exactly what we are right now.

"So 'Far From God' is a metaphor for distance, let's call it this way," Fernando explained. "God is just... Well, it's a very big word because, believe it or not or want it or not, every other band in metal scene will speak about God in various ways. I mean, BEHEMOTH's Nergal will criticize it and burn the Bible. I will try to understand it and read the Bible and try to understand the conflict between man and God. And a bit like that CLASH song, 'Should we stay or should we go?' Like, what's the influence of this big thing, big concept in our life? But in the end of the day, we are both speaking about God, and that shows the importance of this title. And I think it also delivers a kind of a veiled criticism to the monotheistic religions of our time. Those religions are really far from God because if you bother to read the original teachings and the original intentions of Islam, Christianity or Judaism, they try to incline, they try to better man, and man just did a mess about it. We have terrorism, we have occupation, we have evangelism, presidential evangelists. We have all this big explosive mix between religion and politics. So I think the title sits in these many perspectives, but in a nutshell, it's the distance we put between ourselves and ourselves. And it's like sometimes the 'far from God' thing, it's big poetic words to illustrate the way that we choose wrong and the way that we actually try very violently and desperately to justify our own choices. 'Far from God', it's a bit a lack of empathy, and I see this in every day in the street, in the supermarket queue, on the road, sometimes in shows, sometimes the way the bands are treated or the fans are treated. This is a very 'far from God' world, and I think it's definitely a bullseye title because it means a lot of stuff, but in a nutshell, it tells also about the zeitgeist and the state of the world."

"Far From God" was produced by Jaime Gomez Arellano, who has previously worked with PARADISE LOST, GHOST and SÓLSTAFIR.

Arellano initially worked with MOONSPELL in the band's own studio before moving on to his Orgone Studios for the actual "Far From God" recording.