I) Hells ! What’s up ? I’m listening to Elite “Kampen” and last Vomitory during the preparation of this interview. And you ? 

Nuno Santos: Hi! I've been reviewing material for the next issue of Ancient Ceremoines, so I've been listening to quite different stuff, like Keep Of Kalessin, Death Dies, Pest, Thus Defiled, well too many to mention. But at this moment I'm listening to Amaran's new album ! 

II) Can you present your mag and its staff? There are a fucking lot of people in the team. Your magazine has very professional printed. But it seems this evolution is very recent...Ancient Ceremonies was a fanzine before? What was the starting to do this zine? Who help you to begin ?

Nuno Santos: Well Ancient Ceremonies is active since around '95 and during the years different stuff happened. We are basically a underground magazine devoted to metal and "run" by metal fans! Humm... I see that you don't know Ancient Ceremonies very well (shame on you, hehe). Well the magazine is professionally printed for several years. We started as a regular xeroxed zine in 94/95 and released two or three issues in that form, but we always aimed for better quality and invested both money and time into it 'till what you see now!

I've been listening to metal for more than 17 years and I started the zine together with my female companion. I'm sure that if it wasn't her Ancient Ceremonies wouldn't exist as she has been giving me the strength to carry on during the years!

As for the staff, its all about friendship, at the moment there were a few line-up changes due to the fact that a few contributors didn't give a damn about the magazine. We have people writting from all corners of the world, like Greece, USA, Canada and so on ! 

III) Looking at your website, there are some photos of your zine and it seems very great with various bands. What kind of bands do you interview? Only big ones and when labels ask you? Do you keep a place for the UG ? 

Nuno santos: Thanks for the comments! I don't have any kind of limitations regarding which bands to interview, I simply don't give a damn if its a Death, Black, Heavy, Doom whatever band. Its all a matter of personal taste, we feature interviews of the bands we like, either underground or mainstream acts! Of course that as a underground magazine that we are we need help from everybody into the metal scene, bands, labels, distributors and so on! So there is also the return factor, if someone helps us we will also help him! Still things for us work basically like this, we get around 300 albums per issue so we need to check all of them and select the bands that interest us, its simply as that! Its always a matter of personal taste and its not pushed by labels ! 

IV) Well, business question now…How does it work for you to pay the print? Do you have enough ad from labels ? I hope you don’t lose money with this activity, as it’s the case for a lot of metal fanzine. 

Nuno santos: Well things have been quite hard for us! We do not make any money from it, as its too hard to sell many copies of a underground magazine. But we have been lucky and usually the adverts cover the printing expenses (when labels end up paying). Still there are much more expenses than just the printing, we have all sort of post office expenses (which aren't really cheap), promotion (we always send promo copies to all featured labels/bands), internet and so on! So its quite hard to keep things rolling. 

V) It seems your mag is more about Death and Black. What about heavy, thrash, grind, neo(?)? Is it because the staff prefer black and death? Perhaps with more different styles you could touch bigger public ? 

Nuno Santos: Yeah I can say that most of the staff are into more extreme metal styles, but I wouldn't say that its a conscious thing! Still we always try to cover as many metal genres in each issue as possible! The main problem is that we have only 64 pages and we can't feature everybody in a single issue! So there is always a tight selection! And to tell the truth I'm sure that everybody is more than tired of checking the same sweat and non metal bands in mainstream magazines! But I know that Ancient Ceremonies is certainly affected by my personal taste, and I'm a extreme metal bastard, so what's wrong with it, hehe ?! 

VI) What are the others zines in your country ? Which one is the biggest and more well known? What are the zines you recently read? Do you know our French fanzines like Darkness Treasure or Franang ? 

Nuno Santos : Zines in my country! ? As far as I know the zine scene (xeroxed zines) in Portugal is pretty much dead! There are two quite cool publications which are professional printed called Entulho Informativo and Feedback which are both written in our mother tongue. But zines in the true sense of the word, there aren't. A few years ago there was quite a few zines and newsletters but since internet entered in our homes, people tend to create online magazines instead of working with paper, which is a sad thing if you ask me! Because I still haven't found a single person who would spend hours on the internet reading reviews and interviews but with real magazines its a completely different story, you can even spend quality time on the bathroom reading, hehe !

If you place us on the zine scene, I don't want to sound convinced, but I'm sure we are the biggest one in our genre! Have you heard of any other zine in Portugal?

I've heard about Franang but I've never checked it out ! 

VII) What do you think about webzines? There are a lot of them, perhaps too much…Why haven’t you chose the webzine format ? 

Nuno santos: I believe I have more or less showed my opinion concerning webzines. I really don't spend much time reading webzines, I like the real thing, paper magazines! You can carry paper magazines to whatever places you want and read them in all sort of occasions, on the bus, bathroom, eating, drinking, whatever! And webzines you need to be in front of your computer for hours and there is also too many badly made webzines... Yes I think it's starting to look a bit overcrowded, but with time only the strong will survive, like everything else!

We haven't choosed the webzine format 'cause when we started (8, 9 years ago) internet wasn't a big thing and webzines was something that didn't existed back then. At least I do not remember ! 

VIII) You have a website too but nothing like a zine in it. Why this choice of a website? I’ve seen you were selling some cds. Does it work? Are you a big metal VPC in your country ? 

Nuno santos: What would be the point to have a printed magazine if people could check everything online? To tell the truth some time ago it was online on our website a webzine section with reviews, news, interviews that sort of stuff, but we always included material from previous issues and not from the current issue. But it was stealing too much of my time and I had to stop it to focus in other activities. The website is basically a place where you can have all sort of informations about the magazine and like you told also our online store. Well we only started this online activity for a few months, things are growing but we are still way too small in our country! We still need to promote the online store but there aren't many means of promotion in Portugal and its always also a money issue. The online store besides Cds, has Vinyl, merchandising, Videos, publications and all sort of stuff. We have online at the moment more than 5000 articles ! 

IX) Let’s talk about metal and your country. I only know black metal bands (Lux Ferre, Flagellum Dei, Thy Black Blood…). Do you know this bands? Can describe me your scene (bands, public, etc.) ? 

Nuno santos: Yes I know them, except Thy Black Blood. In matter of bands we have our share! Things are growing, unfortunately the attitude of some isn't the best if you ask me! And also the lack of good promotion doesn't help the Portuguese scene. Bands want results without first invest on themselves, this is probably the reason that Portuguese bands usually don't cross the border. I could tell you several stories about how bad our scene is, but I will not! I will just say that everything runs around money and a few companies and influential persons control more or less the scene! We have a few well know persons that everybody thinks (I mean metal fans which aren't aware of backstage interests) they are cool and they help the scene with their radio shows and so on but in fact there is always a game of interests, and they do not promote activities that might create competition! For such a small country there are way too many interests... 

X) Have you time to play in a band? Or to do anything else in order to support the scene (gigs’ organisation, radios, profanations, etc) ?

Nuno Santos: No I haven’t enough time for anything else. If I tell you that all website is made by me, all magazine layouts, also some interviews and reviews, dispatch orders, reply to emails... well whatever activity that you may think off I also make, hehe. So in the end I can't commit to anything else !

I have several projects that I would like to see the light of day but there is always the lack of money issue ! 

XI) Do you know the French metal scene? What do you think about it? I suppose you have listened to last Nehemah…did you like it ? 

Nuno Santos: Yeah I know a few bands, like Arkhon Infaustus, Antaeus, Nehemah, Inhumate and so on! As far I see all metal scenes have its ups and downs and the French scene is no different than any other. There are always good and bad bands, good and bad labels !

Yeah I have here the last Nehemah Cd but I still haven't heard it, sorry! Still I think there are way too many bands making the same thing (I'm not referring to Nehemah particularly), for instance in Black Metal, even if things are better than a few years ago, there are still labels trying to push their "I have heard this one million times before" bands up our asses stating that its the best thing metal have seen the last years! There are way too many bands playing the same thing and there are way too many labels releasing albums with shitty productions (and then telling that its to create a certain atmosphere, hehe), with musicians that play the same formula over and over... and now we have this artificial Nu metal crap that some big labels want to see as the follower of "true" metal... The worst thing is seen mainstream magazines publishing interviews with those bands and even featuring those bands on front covers ! 

XII) Well now if you have something important to say, it’s time! Thank you and good continuation… 

Thanks a lot for your help and for the promotion! Good luck with your projects! Everybody who wants to check out whats happening with Ancient Ceremonies go to our website at: www.ancientceremonies.com

Take care !