MOONSPELL: DVD Details Revealed, New Demo Completed

Portuguese metallers MOONSPELL have set "Lunar Still" as the title of their upcoming DVD, tentatively due in early 2005. The disc is currently in the planning stage and is expected to include four main sections/chapters:

- MOONSPELL live in Katowice, Poland (2004, "Antidote" tour)
- MOONSPELL live in various locations (select cuts recorded betweeen 1993 and 2004)
- All video clips, including the "I Will See You In My Dreams" unreleased zombie video
- MOONSPELL documentary (a band biography, including interviews with the current and past members)

In other news, MOONSPELL recently finished recording a new three-song demo "for internal use only," according to a posting on the band's web site. "This demo allowed us to see the good in the direction we are taking and allowed us also to find out more about the present energies," the band write. "By working on it we have found out important things like concept and even probably the album title which will make things go faster and stronger on the composition. We will be working also with [producer] Waldemar Sorychta ('Wolf', 'Irreligious', 'Sin') on an earlier stage this time and hopefully we will record and release next year as we are so looking forward to."

Also on the MOONSPELL front, the band recently began composing the original score for a a contemporary dance performance that will premier in January 2005 at the Gulbenkian main auditorium in Lisbon, Portugal.

"We were invited by Rui Lopes Graça, a prestigious Portuguese choreographer, to write the music for his next production as he found out about us through our collaboration with the writer José Luis Peixoto on the last album, 'The Antidote'," the band explain on their web site. "José Luis Peixoto worked on the dramaturgy of his last production, curiously entitled 'Antídoto' ('Antidote' in Portuguese) and Rui found out about us after reading the book and picking up the record, with which we feel in lust, especially the multimedia part to which we have composed a soundtrack. We are starting this work as well and the music will be different, of course, from what MOONSPELL does on an album as we will focus mainly in the atmosphere, in the instrumental landscapes, using textures from new pieces and also from the antidote.

"Gulbenkian is the most important cultural Foundation in Portugal and one of the greatest in Europe and his ballet corps (one of the finest in the world) will perform to a choreography of Rui Lopes Graça with music by your very own MOONSPELL."

Check the Gulbenkian web site for more information or download this PDF document to view the full calendar.

MOONSPELL frontman Fernando Ribeiro has also announced a couple of different projects that he is currently involved in. Fernando translated into Portuguese the fictional biography of HP Lovecraft (released some months ago through Vertigo/DC Comics) written by Hans Rodionoff and adapted by Keith Giffen (Lobo) with illustrations from Enrique Breccia ("Batman B&W", "Legion Worlds"). The Portuguese edition will be published in October via Vitamina BD. More information is available at: www.bdmania.pt.

Fernando's second poetry book, "As Feridas Essenciais" ("The Essential Wounds") is also finished and will be released in October through Quasi Ed. There are currently no plans for an English translation, but plans exist for a Spanish edition. More information is available at www.doimpensavel.pt/quasi/.

Ribiero recently recorded a guest appearance on VOLSTAD's version of THE CURE's "Apart", to be included on a THE CURE tribute CD, due this fall through Germany's Equinox Records. VOLSTAD's music is described as "somewhat different from all the other (metal) bands [Fernando has previously] teamed up with, as VOLSTAD is more cabaret, dark, bluesy, electro music."