MOONSPELL's new studio album will be called Night Eternal. They are currently holed up at Antfarm Studios in Denmark with producer Tue Madsen. Some song titles include 'Shadow Sun', 'Night Eternal', 'At Tragic Heights', 'Scorpion Flower', 'Spring Of Rage' and 'Hers Is The Twilight'. Below is frontman Fernando Ribeiro's first studio report:

Return To The Eve

"It would be unfair, imprecise, and inaccurate to start this diary by the events of today. After all, today's slice of bread with Gouda cheese, mug of coffee, orange juice, glass of water and ginseng pill wouldn't amount to a promising start, would they? The day is bleak, rainy, the apartment warm and comfortable, and the jigsaw pieces falling together, instead of apart.

This album has started officially two summers ago. It was demoed, the hard lines defined, kick started. In our heads it's obviously older even though it is not at all born from Memorial scraps but rather from what we thought missing from this album that, if nothing else, helped Moonspell's self-esteem to rise to less painful standards. You know, we are our biggest believer and unbeliever. We call that disquiet in Portugal. Then, intromission came. Most of it was welcomed: a great festival season, which we are working hard to repeat this year, the re-recordings of Under Satanæ, the Coliseum show in Lisbon, some other projects and our lives that sometimes do remind us of their existence. 'Aftermathing', we had to pick up where we had left and that proved hard. Like the luggage on the overhead bins' of a plane, most of our ideas have moved during the flight and had to be handled with extra care. But most of them made it to Denmark, I have to say.

There has hard work done on those ideas and careful selection had to be exercised into the avalanche of ideas, riffs, concepts, structures. So to say this album might have in the end two defined moments. The first demo and the second effort to try and choose from all the ideas that, in the meanwhile, sprang up, caused, certainly, for the 'forced' abandonment of the course of things which has unleashed a torrent that has hard to understand, to tame and to make work. In the end, we did. Otherwise I wouldn't be here being poetic about it.

First step on this new one was to work with Waldemar for pre-production, always a great yet demanding experience. We have really to make ourselves available, open-minded and even if our eagerness of learning has got some reputation and importance in our inner and perhaps closer outer circle, it's not an experience that goes without its bit of pain and frustration. I imagine Waldemar's work being also one of the most important yet somewhat ungrateful to him as he has to deal with people that are truly and fiercely defending their ideas, possessed about their music and with a somewhat heavy personal stand behind it. That is Moonspell for you, and in some mysterious way (that I still have to learn myself about) things worked again between us and him and besides our differences, the common ground reached in this work was an improvement. We were definitely more stubborn this time around than but a good balance was reached which for sure will help the album to be stronger.

A pre-production is a simple name for a complex period where you test yourself, your convictions, your ideas and the ability of letting them go or stand for them against people that are really on your side with the exact same goal of bringing a great album together. For me, in these days, it became harder than the tracking, recordings and mixing. I always compare it with studying hard before a big test. I was a good student at the Portuguese History branch in high school. I have developed a method that was to read hard and clean the school books and some historians' own books and then to make just a big answer to just one question that was basically about everything we have been taught on class for a given period of time. That done, I read to a Dictaphone and recorded it on a tape. Then for the whole of the week-end (test on Mondays, always) I listened to it, and especially the night before Monday until I fell asleep, with that tape still running. Monday morning the test itself was "easy". I just wrote non stop having done all the background thought and reflection beforehand. It worked wonders to the surprise of my mates, and top notes always!

With its obvious creative differences (a History test it's not a Metal album) I look to pre-production each time more as the studying period, the preparation that, in modern times with modern productions, makes a huge difference (at least for us as a band) and makes studio work more focused, a tad more accurate perhaps, rougher on the edges but still passionate by the simple fact that things are shaping up to what they will be in the future. Think twice before reducing it absolutely to a mathematical formula, the final production, and if you insist, please refer to the magic of numbers as well, for it is there to be noticed.

(A short break to let you know I am fully aware I am being romantic here. Most of the bands probably do not share this experience with their fans because they have a different way of looking it, a way that I, sometimes, envy out of their uncompromising stand which allows them to relax. But it seems we are really different there and living with the consequences of it became a habit for us.)

The fourteen days spent with Waldemar were therefore really important and extremely demanding and intense. But, no rest for the wicked. All the keyboards parts were still to be done, all the changes there to be absorbed, some songs to be better crafted, some words to be clarified not to mention the contact with photographers, artists, directors. Yes we know, we are crazy for handling everything ourselves. Let's move on. We finished with Waldemar around the 30th of November and the studio in Denmark was booked for the 7th of January. Hurry, hurry, hurry, worry, worry, worry."

From The Fog

"The rest of the period spent up to the beginning of two thousand hate was a creative fog of which we are only now emerging. All the nights spent on our studio, all the hours consumed, all the ideas, the practise make perfection, the ideas again, the storms and a somewhat unavoidable distance between us, start now to make sense, clear out and pay off. Still a lot has to be done, we know that perfectly. I feel myself that, in today's scene, this thing we say on interviews that we closed a circle it's actually not true. I feel more travelling in between circles (oh! Dante!) inside a bigger one we started, accidentally, a few years ago. Dead tired from the enthusiasm of Memorial I have to curb another one on the way, and fast. We shall see, for now the music is filling up my heart even from a distance."

Age Of Mothers (Endearment)

"…shall be one of the strange titles of our new record. I will have a chance of explaining it in a not so distant future. But, in fact, this album has a strong female thing about it. That should be explained as well. If all goes well, self-explained even. Some will look at it cunningly as female power, some will go in a more pagan direction and some will get it and that's it. I am now in the crossroad myself. To make concept and music match, a preoccupation without which I would doubt the band further existence, we called upon three friends and souls to help us out with it. All I can say now is that they are, each own on her particular way, three beautiful maidens that have graced us with their voices. And allowed me the opportunity to say at least something will be different from the last album. As in all ideas that shore in our bay (this one was sent by a Siren inevitably), it developed to a great range and gave the album that feeling that just the reading of words even by the strongest imagination wouldn't. This choir of beauty and grace was the last thing we recorded in Portugal in an anticipation of what studio work would be. Red wine, candles, great catering (self made, mind you!) and a tiresome but enthusiastic spirit seemed to ignite the album into the path it must walk. It was also about time to make more and to present more in the newer songs and have seduction pure instead of merely inciting the senses. Sometimes more is…more."

Antfarming Again

"The classical two hours of delay in the Lisbon airport (of which nobody is to blame for a change I mean maybe the passenger who dares to voice out a protest is, for he has chosen to fly, goddamn suburban, working class Icarus) has merely brought an itch to our otherwise storyless trip to Aarhus (reads Órhus!). A brief encounter between Luiz Filipe Scolari (Portuguese national team coach) and our players Pedro and Ricardo could be registered in more detail but nobody had a camera or a thought for it and I was in my obligatory after flight toilet visit, and so we were on the road with the friendly Danish guys who picked us up (Franz from Ill disposed and a friend), a cold stop on the service station and so we have arrived to the peace and quiet of Antfarm kingdom, its surrounding river, berry trees, ravens, birds, my jogging companions and landscapes. As we speak everything is oh so quiet. The boys in the living room awaiting my company for yet another movie session. In the meanwhile they see again Motley Crue's Carnival of Sins. Pedro checking US maps online on a geo trip, for sure, or the Portuguese news. I am going. I am going. Drums are done. Sound great. My brother Mike knows his shit. So we have a spine now. Three days, not whole days even, in the great and cosy Feedback studio which we used for drums. Excellent coffee, great hospitality and yet again storyless as we like. So Mike nailed another one, great for us. He can start cooking and that's on the level of his drumming believe me!

As for the others in which I am included, well lots of shopping at the local Fotex (supermarket), picking Mike and Tue from studio, Fransk Danish hotdogs, Danish exquisite bread picking and eating and the late in night cinnamon rolls washed with lots of coffee, superb meals we cook ourselves in a tasty and aesthetic competition and, incredibly, relaxing in the extreme from the fog of ideas and the great strain that was making this one so far, up to now at least. Everybody is laying down watching TV. Looking at walls and at river beds is nothing short than great as in greatness. As for your loyal storyteller, I just crossed out page 600 from the book World Without End, Ken Follett's sequel to the unforgettable Pillars Of The Earth, bought 100€ worth of cool stuff at eBay and Amazon (once an undergrounder…), chasing records, doing bedroom pushups, last fm From the sky related bands, otherwise boring stuff like chasing shows and people and writing studio diaries and keeping myself safe from Guitar World which, after Mike's leave, starts downstairs tomorrow in its full splendour and obsession."