MOONSPELL - In Sickness And Health... Page 2
By Martin Popoff

"Though when we went there, one year ago, we went first to Moscow then St. Petersburg and into Lithuania, and we encountered people with no means to listen to this music but with a lot of appetite for it. So we ended up having a full club, nearly 2000 people, and then the second show when we went back there, we went to a club called Relax, which was a hard metal club, so we partied there a bit, met people from there and even Columbia, the States, and after playing a two hour show in Moscow, we went to Relax and played another set, songs from Moonspell to Iggy Pop and Megadeth! But I got a lot of books from Russian authors. Actually I was leaving to get back to Lisbon, in the airport, and I couldn't carry any more gifts, and I had to share them with the other people on the crew. And I got this big, whatever, fur dog. But I got some very interesting books, a Russian translation of Baudelaire, Flowers Of Evil. I can't read it, but it's great to have in my book collection and I got a couple books by an author that has turned into a reference for me, Mikhail Bulgakov. And we bought a lot of gags like KGB knives to cigarette dispensers, all of that (laughs)."

Back to the new album, I asked Fernando whether Moonspell's music is itself, suggest as an antidote to something...

"Well, it's called The Antidote, but it has a skull on the cover (laughs), so it's deceiving in a way. But I know our music speaks to people. Regardless of the differences we might have with some of our audience, those differences happen because we touch them very deeply. And I think it can turn to one or the other direction. Moonspell can be of help, if I am explaining myself well, you are in a state where you just need powerful music to do something wrong. But it can be the other way around and fortunately, a lot of times, it IS the other way around. It works like an antidote, rather than a poison (laughs). And our music is an escape; and it's an antidote to a lot of things, definitely. We don't want to suggest that our music will cure someone, but it's definitely a help, and it's definitely a place where you can go and be in silence listening to the spirits. And that's the way we wanted to present our album, something that is like a pocket of oxygen, but something that touches them as well. I think that this album is very physical as well. So we have the idea of antidote all over it. Because an antidote might also cause a physical reaction. So we start off with the tribal drums, with the hypnotic thing, with an up-tempo, more direct sound as well. We want this album to have an impact, and the impact definitely has to start from the body and then get into the soul throughout other moments on the album."

MOONSPELL - In Sickness And Health... Page 3