Ghost: you can’t spell Black Sabbath without Abba
Like all the best things in life, heavy metal is silly. This is a genre inspired by a bunch of Brummie maniacs seeing how many people were queuing up to see a Hammer Horror movie, and that brand of wonderful camp has never been too far away from the genre. From Ozzy wailing “oh no” in his band’s title track to Iron Maiden’s Eddie to Sleep Token’s masked-up, prog-metal take on R&B, the more fun you have with the devil’s favourite sound, the better. Today, no one understands this fact better or demonstrates it with more unrepentant joy than Ghost.
Now, you may have noticed in the earlier examples that there is a gap of a few decades between Maiden and Sleep Token. This is not by accident. Pop music got a lot more down to earth in the 1990s, and that attitude continued long into the 2000s. Nowhere was this more apparent than in metal. Sure, you had the prime years of Gwar in that time, but they were a cult concern compared to the likes of Rage Against The Machine, Korn and Slipknot, who wanted you to take their music and their image very seriously indeed.
As rap-metal became Nu-metal, many acts tried to make their entire brand as intense as the music itself. The vast majority of them found the terrifying truth that Metal only gets sillier the more you try to take it seriously. Limp Bizkit, Avenged Sevenfold, and Bullet For My Valentine are all bands that only get funnier the more they try to bully you into not laughing at them. As the 2010s dawned, the only band flying the flag for the fun side of Metal on the world’s biggest stages were, in their intensely deadpan, Teutonic way, Rammstein. For jobbing Swedish guitarist Tobias Forge, this was nowhere near enough.
Forge began working on Ghost in 2006, and to illustrate the band’s commitment to high fantasy and high camp, I’ve broken a kayfabe that lasted until 2017 by mentioning Forge’s name. One that was only broken because of a lawsuit. Up until then, there was no Tobias Forge. There was only the band’s singer and frontman, the Satanic priest Papa Emeritus and the nameless ghouls who follow him, spreading his anti-Christ message through the medium of rocking out.
If all this sounds a little bit close to the Black Metal controversies that plagued Forge’s home nation, don’t worry. The silliness of it all is entirely the point, especially when one listens to the music and finds that it has all the threat and intensity of a golden retriever puppy and the good-natured fun to match. The band’s early work has slightly more edge, mainly due to going hard on the “Hail Satan” aspect, which was made by Forge himself and a mate of his for what sounds like ten bucks and a tub of Pringles.
However, by 2022’s Impera, tracks like ‘Spillways’ are rattling in on piano lines cribbed straight from ‘Money, Money, Money’ by fellow Swedes Abba. ‘Kaisarion’ kicks the album’s doors open with a harmonised guitar solo and an extended, operatic wail straight from the Van Halen playbook. It didn’t come out of nowhere, either. Breakthrough tracks like ‘Square Hammer’ are built on organ riffs not heard since the heyday of Iron Butterfly. Viral TikTok hit ‘Mary On A Cross’ is a plutonium-powered piece of psychedelia. It’s fitting since it was written in 1969 by Papa Emeritus Nihil, the father of the original Papa Emeritus. Wait, what?
Yeah, so the presentation isn’t just vibes and aesthetics. Dear reader, there is lore to this band. Loads of it. Enough to make several iceberg videos on YouTube out of and far too much to fit into this article. It’s this aspect that makes them truly special to me and makes them a devil-horned spiritual successor to one of my favourite bands ever, Gorillaz. Both are great bands in their own right if you focus just on the records, but the storylines, artistry and sheer level of ambition on display make them legitimately special
In a rock scene that is only just rediscovering joy and fun, Ghost have nearly two decades of experience in starting a deliciously dark, raucous party. The kind where the night never ends, the ghouls in the shadows aren’t to be feared, and the only face-melting comes from a sweet guitar solo. So, if you haven’t already, take this as a sign to give Ghost a spin. If you don’t, you may wake tonight with a dark shape at the foot of your bed. If you look closely and spot some white grease paint through the gloom, though, don’t worry. You are, quite literally, in for one hell of a good time.
