No New MOONSPELL Album Until Late 2025 Or Early 2026

In a new interview with Finland's Chaoszine, vocalist Fernando Ribeiro of Portuguese goth overlords MOONSPELL spoke about a possible follow-up to the band's 2021 album "Hermitage". He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "When it comes to new music, first I have to answer myself the question, do people care about new music or it's just the band that care? I don't have an answer that allows me to make up my mind. Yeah, because now MOONSPELL is at this stage, we did a lot of music, we did a lot of different music, and we could live from our legacy from for the next years. We can do a 'Wolfheart' [30th-anniversary] tour in 2025, we can do an 'Irreligious' [30th-anniversary] tour in 2026 and so forth, we could do a 'Sin/Pecado' [30th-anniversary] tour in 2028."

He continued: "We love to do new music, but we have to wait because I don't think we're gonna have a new album before 2025 or '26, even. It's something that we are really talking within the band. I wrote a lot of lyrics, I had a lot of ideas. I threw them out, I picked them up, so it's this kind of process. And why? Because it has to be a really fucking special album. It cannot be [done on] an automatic pilot. That's not what you should do in the scene. In the scene you should go along the flow, like, 'Let's make a new album. Let's get a new tour,' and people will follow along. But I think this time around we're gonna take our time. I think we bought our time, and it was very pricey. So, this time around, I think new music for MOONSPELL only late 2025 or 2026."

In the spring of 2023, MOONSPELL completed the "American Full Moon" 30th-anniversary trek.

Two years ago, MOONSPELL canceled its summer 2022 North American tour due to "unsolvable logistic and transportation problems".

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.

MOONSPELL's 13th studio album, "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).

Three years ago, Fernando told Consequence about recording "Hermitage" during the pandemic: "Social distancing wasn't decreed by law, and it's strange because all of Portugal is 10 million people so it was bizarre just seeing structures without people in the cities. We started demoing in 2017, and it wasn't at all about a pandemic. It was more an album about the polarization and atomization of the world — we're all fragments and cannot agree on anything. Especially with social networks, it felt like the authenticity was going away. It was about connectivity, but there were not enough connections.

"For MOONSPELL, we do have a process and it relies on us sitting down, when we could sit down, and talk together. It's about sitting down with the songwriters Ricardo [Amorim] and Pedro [Paixão]. For MOONSPELL, it's not about jamming in a room and then writing about it. When I sit down with the people who are going to write the music and tell them what it's going to be about, that's the start of MOONSPELL painting the canvas. Giving them this information, the music became more melancholic, less layers and more texture.

"When the COVID pandemic came, we were scheduled to record the album in the U.K. We were in anguish sometimes, because we would have our suitcases ready and went to the airport and Portugal was blacklisted, so we had to just be smart and take a window of opportunity to go to the U.K. We couldn't have the whole band together because of COVID restrictions. Everyone lived through the struggle of cancelations and postponements, but I have to say recording was enjoyable. I felt very privileged to be able to even go to the U.K. and record an album. The studio was in the countryside and it was so isolated and it was perfect to record 'Hermitage'."

Photo credit: Rui Vasco