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Join The Bad Penny and Fernando Ribeiro, frontman for the best metal band to ever hail from Portugal – the indomitable Moonspell – for this very special edition of our ongoing On Tyranny series. The gracious and extremely well-informed vocalist teaches us about the political groups that rallied back and forth for control of the country, with democracy ultimately casting 50 years of fascist rule to the winds and embracing democracy in the 1970s.

Ribeiro also recounts how Portugal’s fascist regime targeted, incarcerated and physically abused his family members – horrendous criminal behavior by ICE agents that is going unchecked at this very moment in the U.S. According to the stories that Ribeiro’s ancestors told him, Portugal’s fascist government banned not just books but music as well, spurring the country’s artists to self-deport elsewhere to escape persecution.

If you don’t think this is happening in America right now, you’re not paying close enough attention – which is all the more reason to see and hear Ribeiro implicitly warn that the U.S. is headed in the same direction. On the bright side, as the goth-metal master explains, when Portugal eventually embraced democracy, arts and culture – and a renewed sense of imagination – immediately flourished in the country like never before.

“The Cold War [caused] countries here that had ‘baby democracies’ to get crushed by the big powers [the U.S. and Russia],” Ribeiro notes.

Stay tuned as we further capitalize on our special interview with Ribeiro for a separate feature about Moonspell‘s upcoming Opus Diabolicum, a monumental monumetal album and concert film that captures the 36-year-old band performing its material with the 45-piece Lisbon Sinfonietta Orchestra in Lisbon. The project is due on Halloween via Napalm. Go to Moonspell’s Bandcamp page for more.

Furthermore, check out The Bad Penny‘s ongoing On Tyranny series, which we launched in the spring, here. Recent installments include interviews with The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, Deaf Club, Cosmic Reaper, Ted Hearne, Terzij de Horde, Chairmaker, MyVeronica, the Gunshy, Planet on a Chain, Necrofier, Cheap Perfume, Bobby Conn, Truculent, Spiritiste and many more.

This entry was posted on 10/25/2025 at 8:44 pm and is filed under Features, Interviews, On Tyranny, On Tyranny, Videos with tags authoritarianism, colonialism, democracy, fascism, Fernando Ribeiro, gaza, Moonspell, On Tyranny, tyranny. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.