MOONSPELL Parts Ways With Original Drummer MIGUEL 'MIKE' GASPAR, Prepares To Record New Album

Portuguese metallers MOONSPELL have parted ways with original drummer Miguel "Mike" Gaspar and have replaced him with Hugo Ribeiro (no relation to MOONSPELL singer Fernando Ribeiro). The band will enter the studio in September to record its new album with producer Jaime Gomez Arellano (PARADISE LOST, ULVER, GHOST). An early 2021 release via Napalm Records is expected.

MOONSPELL's latest release was the "Lisboa Under The Spell" live DVD/CD, which came out in August 2018 via Napalm Records. The live DVD/Blu-ray/3CD package captured MOONSPELL's performance before 4,000 fans at the sold-out Campo Pequeno arena in their hometown of Lisbon, Portugal on February 4, 2017.

MOONSPELL's fourth album, 1999's "The Butterfly Effect", will be re-released on August 7 via Napalm Records. The reissue will include two new remixes, a completely re-designed cover and layout artwork, as well as an exclusive excerpt from the Butterfly FX chapter of the band's official biography, "Wolves Who Were Men".

MOONSPELL's most recent studio album, "1755", came out in November 2017. The Portuguese-language disc was written about the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, also known as the Great Lisbon earthquake, which occurred in the Kingdom of Portugal. In combination with subsequent fires and a tsunami, the earthquake almost totally destroyed Lisbon and adjoining areas.

Last September, Fernando Ribeiro told Tinnitus Metal Radio about MOONSPELL's next LP: "Our new album is going to be very different. It's picking up from [2015's] 'Extinct', not from '1755'. We're writing down the album already. We have six songs ready. We love what we are doing. It's very melancholic, it's very existential. It's very different from what we did. Different is always something people will always expect from MOONSPELL. We're having lots of fun doing it because we love songwriting."

Photo credit: Rui Vasco