As has become tradition, before their performance the band had to clear one small hurdle called the press conference. On this occasion the vocalist and frontman Fernando Ribeiro handled matters on behalf of the entire band. He coped with this task quite brilliantly. The overall impression of Fernando — not as a musician but as a person — was very vivid. He showed himself to be an educated and intelligent man, yet this did not come across in his words as self-promotion — he was quite modest and candid.
A good number of questions were posed at the press conference — some were tricky, some were foolish, some were interesting, some less so. Naturally, everyone's primary interest was the new album (Memorial [2006]), which had incidentally been recently released. By the time of the press conference I had already had the opportunity to listen to this disc several times, but for some reason never dared ask why this album had become heavier than the band's previous work (with a slight lean toward black metal). I will also add, continuing on this topic, that Fernando hardly performs songs in clean vocals anymore — the growl-scream line has become dominant. Getting ahead of myself, I should note that the band played 2 songs from the new album — "Finisterra" and "Blood Tells". Though Fernando did not want to reveal secrets about which compositions would be performed that day — he explained this by wanting to surprise Kyiv with a small surprise.
It became known that there is a very high probability that a DVD by the band will be released closer to the end of the year. (We wait, we wait, we wait!!!)
For many it came as a great surprise that in addition to music, Fernando is engaged in literary activity, but as he explained, literature is a hobby while music is work. He said that two of his books had already been published in Portugal, which he promised would be translated into English in the near future. Of course, there was no escaping the question of what the musician knows about Ukraine. It turned out he knows — despite this being his first time in our country — he mentioned knowing of the large number of immigrants from our country in Portugal. He said that many of them greatly love and support the band in the musicians' homeland through post and email. He even knew about the "Orange Revolution", but did not want to comment on this event, as he felt his opinion would be rather limited since he gets his information from television or magazines, where the truth is not always told, or told in full.
In addition to music and literature he also loves sport (especially football). I personally very much liked the question from one journalist: "Which football club do you prefer — Benfica or Sporting?" And I liked Fernando's answer even more: "I am from Lisbon, but the club I support is Porto." Fernando also sometimes plays football with other band members (he admitted, though, that he plays not quite like Shevchenko, but still not badly).
He also has a very strong dislike of pop music, but has nothing against Kylie Minogue — possibly he likes her more as a person than as a musician. Though, you know, he also admitted that he has a preference for brunettes (his girlfriend is, as it happens, a brunette).
In general, what can one say — the man left quite a positive impression, which once again stoked the desire to get to the hall as quickly as possible and enjoy the music the band had prepared for us that evening.