‘Far From God’ has Moonspell diving head-first into the gothic rock side of their sound. This is especially apparent in the guitar work of Ricardo Amorim. He talks about how the Portuguese band arranges their songs, his relatively newfound love for Telecasters and how his touring experience has changed his live set-up.

“Usually, Fernando (Ribeiro, singer) comes up with a concept, and then Pedro (Paixão, keyboard player and occasional guitarist) and I write most of the music”, Amorim explains. “It has been like that for ages. Obviously, the band is not a dictatorship. We are open to anything. Anyone can come up with ideas to bring to the song. But if they don’t appear, someone has to do it. Fernando once said: everybody come up with ideas, they just have to be better than mine.

Having said that, with this band, if someone says: we should do a heavier album, and we start writing heavier stuff, then two months later, someone will say: we need to go more goth, more atmospheric, that’s what we do best. What usually happens is that the songs themselves decide which direction the album is going. For example: we write six songs, two of them are atmospheric, and the other four are heavy, but the two atmospheric songs are much better than the heavy ones. Sometimes, all you need is a good song to inspire you to do the rest of the album.

It depends on how we feel, and it depends on the lyrical content. The album will end up revealing itself. We quit deciding on a direction beforehand a lot time ago, because we never know. It took us five or six years to do a new album, and in these six years, this new album was supposed to be heavy with lots of double-kick drums, and then prog, and then any style you can imagine.”

A Big Passion and a Big Attraction

“It was difficult to come up with new stuff, because we have been doing this for thirty years, and sometimes you ask yourself: what else can we bring to the table? Are we still valid? What can we write? How can we write? It was hard to find the inspiration to write new stuff for a while, but we ended up realizing that even though we like metal, we have a big passion for and a big attraction to dark wave and gothic, like The Sisters of Mercy and Fields of the Nephilim.

We have a big passion for this kind of aesthetic. We are naturally drawn to that. I think we are better rocking out than playing extreme, because it comes more natural to us. To me, it made sense to go in this direction and try to create something simpler and more direct that people can identify with and recognize the band. We did this before, but after all these years, sometimes, it feels fresh to hear this kind of stuff again.

This is who we are. Sometimes we play heavy, sometimes we go more goth, and then we can go heavier again. I guess we get bored of styles very quickly, so we need to always try different things.”

At Least One Fender Guitar

“I spent most of my career thinking that if you want to play heavy, you’ve got to have humbuckers and guitars that are designed for metal, or at least for heavy rock. I always like to think of myself as a bit more than just a metal guitarist, because I like music in general. Metal is the place where I found the connection and the love for it, and that’s how I express myself, but I like all aspects of the electric guitar. Because there are brilliant guitar tones and brilliant guitar players from all walks of music.

At some point, I thought to myself: dude, you cannot call yourself a guitarist – not a metal guitarist: a guitarist – if you don’t own at least one Fender guitar. Because I never had those, and I never cared much about them, because I thought they were not ergonomic or not suitable for my hands, or they wouldn’t deliver as much punch and aggressiveness as I thought they should do.

Once we went into the studio to record ‘Extinct’ (2015), it was suggested that I would try some clean guitars for the clean guitars. I said yes immediately, because I know that Fenders deliver bright clean tones. And the funny thing is that I ended up recording some lead guitars with a Tele as well. So a few years ago, I thought: I’m going to buy a Telecaster. Not to play metal; just to have one and try different stuff, and play with a different vibe.”

A Big and Wonderful Tone Spectrum

“I ended up plugging in a Tele and having great fun with it. At some point, I thought: let’s see how much this can deliver. So I just cranked the gain up, and I thought: see? It works! It’s not that punch that you would find with active humbuckers, but I found something with a lot of personality, and a voice of its own. What I think is nice about these guitars is that they are not suitable for everything, but at the same time, they have a personality of their own, and I found myself enjoying playing these guitars a lot.

So for around seven years, I have been playing mostly Tele, and I decided to buy one. I had to buy it second-hand, because from what I know, Fender doesn’t make the Ultra Luxe series anymore, which has a humbucker, but you can also split the coils, and there’s a Floyd Rose as well.

It’s a beautiful shape. It’s got a maple fretboard, and I love maple. I don’t know why, but my fingers just feel great on maple. You can have the best of both worlds. You can have heavy tones if you just crank the gain up, but if you want the vintage stuff, you just do the split coil thing.

I have two custom-made guitars from the Finnish brand AmfiSound. They have Bare Knucles, and they are amazing. But the thing is: the delivery is so big that you don’t get enough headroom sometimes. Sometimes you want a clean, atmospheric sound, and you have to have the gain not even on zero, but below zero, if it was possible, because you already get this break-up tone at zero. And sometimes I just want a sparkling clean, with presence, in-your-face, like the good old Fender amps.

For me, it’s important to have the versatility the Telecaster gives me, because I don’t want to feel limited o just one type of tone. There is such a big and wonderful tone spectrum in the guitar that I feel like I want to try a little bit everything. Like a buffet.”

Something a Bit More Practical

“I spent a few years playing with Kempers. Now I use a Fractal FM9. It makes your life so, so much easier. Mesa Boogie has always been very kind with me, helped me a lot, and I’m a big fan of Mesa Boogie amplifiers. I’ve got a Road King and two Dual Rectifiers, and I love them. I also have a TriAxis, which is an amazing piece of gear, and their tone is just something out of this world. Besides that, there’s all sorts of amps that I like, and they are all amazing.

But the thing is, when you go out and play live, especially if you have to fly, or you play at a festival where you have twenty minutes of changeover… Sometimes they set up an amplifier you asked for on the rider, and sometimes they don’t, so everything changes because you have to figure out how to connect your effects and all the routing systems that you have, so that it will work well with a different amplifier. It’s a different configuration, and you’re already stressing out, because you’re losing time.

Sometimes the amps are not delivered in the best shape. Other times, everything is chaotic, and you find a backline plugged into the power source of the lighting rig, so you get a lot of hum. A few times, we found ourselves having to cut ten minutes of our set, because by the time we were supposed to start playing, I was still figuring out how to solve noise issues and weird things.

The factor that made me decide to try out modeling – because I was a bit skeptical about it – was when we had a tour with Epica planned in the States. And in the States, you have to rent gear. Mesa Boogie delivers amps, but they do that through rental companies. But these companies make money by renting out the cases, because they say: okay, but the amplifier is not going to leave the warehouse without a case.

So you rend the case, and by the end of the tour, the case rental is even more expensive than the amp itself. I found myself a bit tired of this, and I needed something a bit more practical. Everybody plays on in-ears anyway, so that helps a lot.”

Pure Tube Electricity Imperfection

“When it comes to recording, I go to the holy grail. It’s just amps. Pure tube electricity imperfection. That gives the music its soul. That’s what makes it special. That’s the genesis of guitar tone. Everything else is just something to make the gig happen with the best sound quality you can deliver.

One thing you have to keep in mind is that fans don’t care if you have a problem with the cable, or if a tube is defective, or an amp is in bad condition. You have to go there, set up, and deliver. They don’t really care what you use, as long as it sounds good.

But for recording: no, that’s got to be the holy grail. It also depends on the producer. Jaime Gómez Arellano, with whom we did the last two albums, is a complete analog freak. For the previous record (‘Hermitage’, 2021), I found myself recording with amps that were older than me – and I’m 53. Sound City amplifiers, Fender Twins, Marshall Plexis, and my favorite: a Roland Jazz Chorus. Because it’s the best chorus on the planet. It has something no other device can deliver.

For the latest album, I used some more modern stuff, like the Mesa Boogie Road King and an EVH amp. It’s natural that we use that, because if Moonspell has so much atmosphere, we can’t just rely on pure distortion. We need different tones. We need something that suits the vibe of the songs.”

Tired of Tap Dancing

“I started automation maybe four years ago, because I was tired of tap dancing. There was a time I could program while playing with my feet. I had a G-System from TC Electronic, a great system, and you could operate pedals in a way that you can reprogram some stuff on the fly while you’re playing.

But you know, you’re playing, you’re changing effects, you have to do backing vocals, and you have a strobe light right in front of your face, so you don’t see anything. You can’t get away from the microphone, because you have to be near your pedalboard all the time. And I use a lot of effects, and a lot of different sounds. I created a monster, so now I have to deal with it.

So I decided to try automation to see how it feels. It was a little bit weird in the beginning. I had the same feeling the first time I tried a wireless system. It was strange not feeling a cable. But at the third or fourth gig, you’re already used to it. Ninety percent of our show, at least for me, is automated. On some songs from the first album (‘Wolfheart‘, 1995), we don’t use a track, so there’s no automation there. We go old school.”

The Songwriter Approach

“I spend so much time wandering around the song, and then suddenly, there’s a spot for the solo, and I have to wonder: what do you have for this part? Then I just need to jam around a little bit. I love guitar solos, they’re obviously great fun, and when you’re a guitarist and you want to express yourself in a more individualistic way, that’s when you are speaking and singing. But at the same time, it’s always a struggle for me, because I don’t know what to do, I don’t know where to go, and every time I start jamming, nothing sounds good to me.

So I have to take the songwriter approach when I write a solo. There has to be a story, a climax, and a way to resolve itself. Sometimes, having to do that in such a short period of time freaks me out. But I always find a way to make things work. Whether it’s two hundred notes or one note, it has to be expressive. When I hear David Gilmour play – one of my favorite guitarists, if not my number one – I feel like he is talking to me.

For me, that’s the most powerful thing in music, when you’re able to communicate something to someone, and that someone is hearing you like you’re talking to them. Usually, I try to go in that way. I have been avoiding the shredding stuff. That’s not the kind of race I want to be in. Let me try to find something where I feel comfortable, and I can be as honest as possible as a musician. In fact, for this album, I thought: I really don’t want to do any solos. I ended up doing four.

The older I get, the more I try to understand things like: how does harmony work? Why does this note that doesn’t sound in tune sound so great in the song? This is the wrong note in the right place. How do they relate to each other? How can you lift things up in a song and bring them down? For me, the most important thing is to play with emotion. To make a person feel something, rather than be astonished by the speed of your hands. At the end of the day, that’s what makes you want to listen to the song again.”

Finish the Race Before Everybody Else

Since rhythm guitar is what Amorim plays most, the fact that Moonspell got a new drummer in Hugo Ribeiro, after playing with Mike Gaspar for nearly thirty years, must have been quite the change. “It was strange in the beginning”, Amorim admits. “Because obviously, Hugo has his personality, and he has a different feel, but he plays so well, and he is so consistent that we actually found ourselves correcting ourselves to lock in. We were the ones who had to adapt a little bit, because the drums are the foundation of the rhythm, so we have to lock in with them.

Hugo is good. He grooves well, he’s expressive, he’s consistent, always on time, and after a few rehearsals, everything sounded very, very natural. When we started playing live with him, everything was improving, especially with the rhythm guitars. Guitarists have a tendency to rush. Always. And we are the type of band that always tries to play a bit more laid-back.

So for me, there came a moment when it was really important – especially live – to hear some elements of the drums that push you back, and avoid that you speed up all the way and finish the race before everybody else. It’s weird, because I used to just need a hi-hat, because that counts the tempo, and a bit of snare. Right now, toms are very important to me, because when Hugo plays the toms, you feel the groove. It’s like dancing. That helps me go with him.

It’s really interesting. You start to hear all the details, and you start to lock your guitar details with these drum details, and everything becomes much more musical, much more interesting.”

Not Like a Guitarist Programming Drums

“The funny thing is that recently, I have become a fan of the channel Drumeo. Because when I write songs, I like to at least try to understand or get a glimpse of how a drummer thinks. I found Drumeo by accident. Like most of my things, actually. And I saw Jonathan Moffett, who used to play for Michael Jackson. He did one of his covers, and I was amazed. Not because of his technique; I was amazed because of the good taste he has.

Every little detail of the song; just a simple hi-hat hit here, or an extra snare hit that would enhance a word of the lyrics. I thought it was incredible. It’s how drums and lyrics can be connected. So I wanted to learn how drummers feel music, how they see music, and it helped me a lot to lock with the drums.

When I write songs, I want to try out some drum ideas with software. I tried to think a little bit like a drummer. Obviously, I failed miserably, because I’m a guitarist. When drummers try to program guitars, it’s also a disaster. But I like to think that I’m a good drummer in my head. It allows me to try out ideas. And when there’s a certain drum part I would like to try, I usually say: I want you to play this like a drummer, not like a guitarist programming drums. This is just for you to get a glimpse of the vibe I’m looking for.

We all need to allow other members of the band to be creative. Otherwise, what’s the point? Sometimes they see the music, or details of the music, better than I do as the composer, because you’re too involved sometimes. You get option paralysis, you get too much bias, and sometimes you need someone else to point out: this is where the gold is. And sometimes it’s important when someone keeps you in check, because you might be losing a great idea because you’re too involved. We just try to get the best out of each other as bandmates.”

How Things Connect with Each Other

“Keyboards play a very important role in this band. And you need to be very careful, because the frequencies that a keyboard occupies can be the same as the guitar. If Pedro plays one note, and I’m playing the same note, no problem, but it has to be at least one or two octaves different. Or with chords, we might have to make inversions and see how things connect with each other. It’s like a puzzle.

On stage, Pedro only plays guitar on the songs that were recorded with this intent. They were written in a time when he was playing much more guitar. But since more than ten years now, he has come back to his primary instrument, which is keyboards. But we always find a way to make the two-guitar effect thing happen live, with doubler effects or stereo stuff.

But yeah, some songs from ‘Night Eternal’ (2008), ‘Memorial’ (2006) or ‘The Antidote’ (2003), Pedro really has to pick up the guitar, because there’s no way it’s going to sound like that with just one guitarist. The song ‘Night Eternal’ we can get away with very well, and ‘Everything Invaded’. But we tried ‘Finisterra’ with just one guitar once and it was just not the same thing. It’s a song which has this wall of sound, and it really needs a second guitar.

These days, when we write music, we always have to think about the fact that there’s only one guitar player in the band, who cannot pretend that he’s two guitarists. So we try to create this sort of dynamic with the keyboards. Intelligent pitch shifting does wonders on harmonized stuff.

There are also songs where Pedro sampled my guitar. He asked me to send him some power chords, so I recorded them with every root note, sent him the waves, he sampled them, and allocated them to the keys of his choice. It’s just like creating effects on a guitar; he creates his own keyboard sounds.

We’ve been doing this forever. If you listen to our second album ‘Irreligious’ (1996), the song ‘Opium’, there is a guitar riff, but in the background, you hear this plastic synthetic keyboard sound emulating a distorted guitar. Nowadays, I don’t know if we would do it that way, but back then, it all made sense. It was an aesthetic.”