The Black Horned Rhino. Just this week has been announced that the species is no longer alive. With a scarce amount of the animals living in captivity due to poachers aiming to kill the animal for their own self worth, the Rhino is just the latest spokesperson for the decline of the animal kingdom. With the release of their brand new album Moonspell arrive for their London date, as we walk behind the decidedly sodden streets of The Underworld I got to chat with Moonspell drummer Mike about the current state of the world, the bands brand new album Extinct and Fado…

The Metalist : The New album Extinct has just been released are there any over arching themes within the album? Many songs of the songs echo the finality of life for example Breathe (Until We Are No More), Extinct, The Last Of Us, A Dying Breed…)

Mike: Well it’s a theme that Moonspell have worked on throughout the years. We’ve always been a dark band, we’ve come from the more underground black metal even though we already had influences from Arabic sounds and percussionist along with Portugese influences coming from Fado. Which is very melancholic, so I think thats really our soul. If you could see what the Portugese would be for world wide, it would be Fado. We’re like the metal goth fado version, but the soul you see the lyrics of fado most of it is always about depression.

What is Fado?

It’s our traditional music, have you ever heard of Maria Rodrigo? She was very famous in the sixties. It’s like world music, we have a traditional Portuguese guitar which is a twelve string guitar. It’s usually very melancholic when you hear it, that’s the experience usually what people say, especially tourists that come to Portugal. You can got to a fado restaurant and you can heard fado. It sounds very depressing but at the same time soothing. Kind of fulfils your pain.

Kind of like a dark beauty?

That’s what Moonspell has always been, we’ve always been in these contrasts. Between the beauty the darkness and the evil. That also brings us to think of how the world is, with extinction, You see how the planet is transforming how things are disappearing, we’re going to be extinct probably soon if we don’t stop fuckin up the world. We have this shirt , where we got all these animals that just don’t exist anymore. When we’re going through all these animals, we were like if you really care about this it’s really sad man. There are certain species that not only don’t exist for a hundred years but there are species disappearing , like last year! It’s constant. Fernando with the lyrics, not only did he bring it all out, you know he’s been behind all the lyrics of Moonspell. Always tweaking and trying to get into people’s wound, as much as he can. But he also went and talked with a lot of college professors and scientists because we did a documentary about the recording of the album, but we also did it a little more scientifically explaining extinction and what it can do for the human and our future.

Is that on the Deluxe edition of the new album?

Exactly, on the documentary, we have also had also the group of wolves, Iberian wolves that we’ve been apart of for some years. We try to help them out with promotion also the awareness of the wolf and these people dedicate their whole lives for these animals and these species. When you talk to them it’s really severe, it’s not the same thing you see on TV “Oh ok whatever, another dead animal”

People do tend to ignore those kind of things on the news though…

It’s just whatever is on the news that’s what’s more popular like war and oil the prices and all that bullshit, but we’re not really being the best human beings that we can now are we!

So talking about the new album, how have the fans been reacting to the new material on tour so far?

Surprisingly very well! We weren’t expecting people to get into as fast as possible, because the album only came out not even a month ago. We’re already on tour with it we did 21 shows straight, people don’t normally have time to listen. Most of our fans listen from night to day just so that when they go to the show they already know the lyrics and they know the songs and that was overwhelming to have that, for people to accept us. We did take a little risk in not going so aggressive, our last releases have all been quite aggressive.We wanted to go a little bit more into our past and have more space the music. Melodic riffing, the subtle things that aren’t so complex. You hear the metal bands that have gone completely tweaked and compressed out as shit!

There are a couple of songs, on the record, “Medusalem” has fantastic guitar solo on it! What symphonic elements did you use on the album?

We use a full Turkish orchestra for that song and Breathe, so all the orchestras. That you hear, the Arabic sound is ten strings. Violins, cellos, and it has that particular sound because it’s all classical musicians but they’re from Turkey. That’s their way of playing, that’s their influence, they’re born with that. Its really special, you can’t really find anywhere else in the world. We were in contact, through our producer Jens Borgen, he suggested it because as he had worked with Orphaned Land the band from Israel they had already worked with this maestro. They couldn’t speak English and we couldn’t speak Turkish but it worked out absolutely fine! But we found a way to communicate, through the music. He sent over all the files, it’s also on the documentary. You can see them recording it in Turkey on top of our songs, it’s interesting but also at the same time it’s funny because you have this contrast.

So it’s pretty in depth the documentary for the new album?

It was supposed to be twenty minutes and it came out eighty. We just got really excited because everything was going so well, Vitor Castru which is the director that did the video is a good friend of ours, he also did our latest video Extinct. He was really excited to just be with us, he would always say “I’m like a ninja, just be yourselves”.

Shooting from the shadows kind of thing..

The first day I was recording drums, he was already there, but since he’s a good friend I forgot that he was there. He had cameras everywhere and actually the most stressful period for anybody! I’m going to start recording the new album! They already had all these people around me, setting up the drums, tuning the drums, it was all scientific to make sure all the sound was perfect, take a whole day doing that, then you have a guy running around filming you! Wanting to do the interviews, the interview that I did on that was on the third day? It was like at two in the morning and I had already recorded like half the album, because he had to leave. This was in Sweden and he had to back to Portugal. This is the commitment though, I mean it’s for us, it’s not like running around who’s this dick trying to bother me hahahaha

You’ve mentioned that you used Jens Borgen instead of Tue Madsen, who you have previously worked with. What inspired that and how was it?

With Tue we did three amazing albums, we did a re recording of our old material. That was our first experience back in 2007, then we did The Night Eternal which was amazing and also the last album Alpha Noir and Omega White. Where I actually recorded inside a swimming pool, without the water of course haha! They said we wanted to do something crazy and they all worked out fine. Sometimes you need a different direction, you just need a different chemistry. It’s not like he’s better or worse than Jens or any other producer we have worked with in the past. Jens is a guy that’s a little bit younger than us. He’s very experienced, he’s worked with some of the most amazing successful bands of the moment. And there was an album that he really liked from Moonspell back in 1998 which was Sin. Which was one of our more goth directions ,at the time, so for him it was exciting to do that. Most of his clientele is more extreme metal. So for him to get a little bit out of that put his soul his life and his dedication which he did. He put so many hours into the album, he has a family so many responsibilities, but still at night he was there in the studio working on the album constantly. He did all the pre pro in Portugal, spent ten days with us in our studio then we went straight to the studio in Sweden. He took care of everything, he was a true gentleman, we felt like royalty, everything was taken care of!

You mentioned earlier on that you have a lot of influences from Portugal, I was wondering is there a big metal scene there?

Well the metal scene I think is big because we have a lot of fans, if Metallica plays at Rock Am Rio, by the time Metallica goes on stage you’ll have 90,000 people. We are a country that only has 10 million, so I think that’s pretty big. But the thing is that when Metallica and bands like that became popular like in 1993 with the black album. That was also when Portugal was growing in terms of access to things. Going through a dictatorship until 1974 that whole hard rock period kind of in the eighties, kind of was non existent. It was really hard to get these CDs or DVDs at the time, unless you had somebody that lived in England or America, which is my case. I come from Portuguese immigrants and was born in America so of course in the eighties, I had everything!

When I got to Portugal, there was kind of like a gap. Hard rock wasn’t very popular, they went to Pink Floyd or Genesis, you know stuff from the sixties, seventies or they went to extreme metal, so that genre has made it also more complicated for bands to form and be successful. Most of the big bands in Portugal, they’re not that old but they still sound like they’re trying to imitate Rolling Stones hahaha! If you know what I mean, if you go to Spain or Italy, the bands are like the big bands are a little bit heavier. Iron Maiden, at least at that level and I can see that it has to do with all the influences. Unfortunately there are bands that didn’t grow, there are a lot of bands that are into the Metalcore scene now, more alternative, extreme, grind whatever. They have their scene, then it’s hard because it’s very competitive. When you’re doing metalcore, most of the bands come from the states. That’s their thing! So the reason we’ve always tried to explain for the younger bands, probably one of the reasons were different to everyone else is because we use our Portuguese influences hahaha!

You have to think about where your roots are from.

It’s hard not to write songs, if it wasn’t in that way. Trying to sound like Metallica or Lamb Of God. We tour a lot and there are bands like that all over the world. If you go to Turkey or Greece.

You just have the Turkish Lamb Of God!

Exactly, we’ve seen this since the nineties and some times when bands ask us why aren’t there more bands coming from Portugal. I can tell you right now, because they don’t respect our origins as much, you know they wanna be the next Lamb Of God or the next Metallica! And it’s just not gonna happen haha

I was going to say, you’ve said a lot about your Portuguese heritage but I was thinking, having listened to the new record. There’s a slight Joy Division-esque delivery that Fernando sings in his vocals, have they been an influence at all?

Of course! We have a cover of Joy Division that we did, back in the nineties , “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. You can check that, so of course we did that like fifteen years ago almost. We also have a cover of Depeche Mode. We’ve done other covers in the genre of Gothic, Fields Of The Nephilim, Sisters Of Mercy, The Cure… Also growing up that was another thing. The tribes were so small that we all hung out in the same places.

So if you were a metal head you would hang out with the goths or the punks, we were all very tight. I had these friends of mine, they were my girl friends, girl space friends hahaha but they were older than me and they kind of took me in because I was really young and couldn’t really go out. That’s all they listened to, Jesus and The Mary Chain, just goth stuff. When I came into the band, I was really young, I was only sixteen, never really had a big influence of hard rock, black, death whatever…. But already at that age I was completely ok with Bauhaus and all these bands and also the band. Those bands were huge in Portugal, even today Depeche Mode will sell out 20,000 people alone. If it’s a festival it will be 50,000 to see Depeche Mode no problem. It connects very well again with the Fado, melancholic, even the people you would consider more mainstream in Portugal, they’ll listen to Pixies etc… That generation that are like in their 40s, 50’s they love that! That’s their generation so that’s our little older generation that we also tried to combine.

You’ve been a band for twenty three years now, how do you remain current and fresh, incorporating older influences whilst Extinct is still very much a modern album. How do you keep the fire going so to speak?

I think the main thing when you do something like this, art can be inspirational. On the other hand you can’t just wait around, so when you work as hard as we do, we constantly rehearse, we constantly talk to each other. We’re constantly thinking of new ideas, things are always happening. You’re always with new bands, new comers, older bands, new festivals, new tours, places you’ve never played, people you’ve never met. If you think about it’s not that difficult to keep inspired haha. As long as you keep an open mind, you know you have to listen to people. You can’t just go through life like “oh how you doing? I’m off, see you later”. If it takes just a little time, enjoy those little moments, which we try to do and appreciate that. We come from a small country so this is like a big opportunity just to like blow away, travel the world.

It’s also the connection, we have a lot of people that are living abroad now because it’s difficult in Portugal these days, especially London or Paris each time you see more Portuguese. They’re starting to be younger! They’re not those old people anymore with that stupid mentality and they’re Moonspell fans!! And we bring Portugal to them in a way, we even had a fan now in Luxembourg “it’s not like you’re my favourite metal band, but you’re Portugal and you’re professional band and you tour and that’s respectful”. In the conversation and you say “Oh I like Adema or Cradle Of Filth” well they’re all our friends! We’ve toured with them, we’ve known them for years. There are few bands that can have that opportunity so I think that it’s a plus definitely for us to continue and stay inspired. To try and get the best out of us, it also has to do with compromises. With this album, my perspective of drumming, I could come in with all these drum parts but no, I go in with an open mind and I want to listen to the music. I want to listen to the vocals, the melodies, the guitars and how we construct it! What makes it the best song possible for us and for the listeners. That’s our objective.

Did you actually think of any new techniques to incorporate as a drummer on the new album?

That was more working with the producer, when you’re working with a producer like Jens he’s very precise and surgical on things. I started calling him the scientist, so it has to do with a lot of dynamics and the proper emotion that you put into the beats. It’s not just playing, you can put a computer playing it, you know? So that’s the topic that was the most important, the thing that will thrill people, that will make people move! He explains this in the documentary, which is really fun, he has his mathematical mind, where he’s looking at the computer and everything says that this is right but them he’s listening with his heart and his soul and saying “is this what’s going to make the difference?”.

It’s really hard for him to decide! It’s the same thing with a musician, especially with a drummer! You practice your whole life to be like a machine, then he’s telling you lighten up a little bit! Hahaha ok! And of course it’s like an orchestra, it’s the most important. I loved studying orchestra percussion when I was a kid. I started young in the band and had the opportunity to continue and that’s what makes everything so grand! All that precision and all that delicate dynamics on the drums, that’s exactly what we did. The right sounds, the right cymbal or hi hat or the ride, little things that you might not think of but in the overall, when you listen to the album, thats why it’s amazing!

Haha it does make a difference! In regards to the symphonic elements, you said used a Turkish symphony was that specifically the only symphonic style or were there others throughout the record?

For those two songs (Medusalem and Breathe) it was more that Arabic, middle Eastern sound from the Turkish orchestra, but then we have other songs like Extinct where we have a more grand operatic which was a collaboration. A man called John, we have never met him, we just worked with him through email. He collaborates with Jens, he kind of helped out Piedro, our keyboard player he does most of the programming. That collaboration, it’s not just the stuff we have there then there more haha!

Lots of different layers that you might not see…

Its a huge production. With all the collaborations, with all the people we had in the studio, it wasn’t just Jens recording. Jens did, drums, vocals and mixing and mastering. David Castillo did all the guitars and bass which is one of his partners, another amazing human being. He brought out the best in Ricardo and Ayers the guitars and bass, the solos the sound… He’s like a collector, he goes for old vintage pedals that they used in the seventies. He really goes for those authentic sounds, that’s really cool especially if you’re a guitar player. He was like a kid looking at all the stuff hahaha!

Like a kid in candy shop! The album is kind of big and modern but there retains a sense of organic feel about it…

We’re still a band that recorded on tape from the nineties! If you’re a band in the 2000’s you’ve lost that opportunity you don’t know what’s it like to suffer in the studio to get that perfect take. It’s tape!! You can’t fix it you know? You can’t do nothing. If you make a mistake in the whole song you have to start from the beginning. It’s not like now where you can cut, you could do that with guitars and vocals with the punch in but still it was pretty delicate. The best that all the producers wanted was a band that actually played well when they entered the studio. That’s actually what we prepared ourselves for. There was actually a period in time where we prepared ourselves a little too much haha, now we have learnt how to relax a little bit.

What about you yourself, what are your biggest influences as well as the band, we’ve spoken about Depeche Mode and Joy Division etc… Is there a unified influence?

Well that was later on, as a kid growing up I was a huge hard rock fan. Mötley Crüe, Van Halen, loads of other bands, Led Zeppelin… Anything that’s Black Sabbath, that’s the stuff I listen to a lot like Motörhead. Going to Portugal I got introduced immediately to extreme bands, Morbid Angel, Death, Carcass, Napalm Death, so that was a huge part of my upbringing, my teen years. So it’s all good really! It’s all amazing music it’s just different genres. It depends on the album! Like Zoon from Nephilim it’s an amazing album and it’s made by McCoy hahaha!

And finally what albums have you been listening to for this past year?

Well I got the new Judas Priest, Redeemer Of Souls and was very surprised. I’m into the older bands for some reason, maybe because I’m getting old! It’s hard to listen to listen to the younger crowds. The Black Sabbath album 13, was amazing with Rick Rubin that was one of my favourite albums. I also listened to some of Johnny Cash, because of the Rick Rubin, that’s sort of America Records. I was listening to that a lot actually when we did the album in Sweden. The voice is very soothing haha!

Oh yeah of course, The Man Comes Around, Hurt,

From Nine Inch Nails,

I Hung My Head…

It’s one of the most amazing albums, then again that kind of feeling you get from Johnny Cash is the kind of feeling you get from this Fado experience. So that’s why we’re a bit connected to this little alternative melancholic sadness, if you got to Portugal you would see that!

Upon finishing the interview, the man’s decidedly positive outlook becomes infectious, after having to move their Underworld date due to an unforeseen emergency, Moonspell fans creep from their crevices to the arrival of these true pioneers. Bringing home all of the points we spoke about, it seems that Moonspell truly are the bringers of Fado experience. Though current affairs may bring sadness, we can all benefit from a fantastic lesson in humanity from these melancholy mongers reinforcing that the fact that though the experience may be brought from Portugal its effects are universal.

Moonspell’s brand new album Extinct is out now via Napalm Records.