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Is Ghost a Christian Band?
Swedish rock band, Ghost was established in 2006 in Linkoping by the band’s frontman, Tobias Forge, and his former bandmate from “Repugnant”, Gustaf Lindstrom. Before the release of their first two songs, the band’s leader, Forge suggested that the group be made an “anonymous theater band” and because of this, Forge is the only known band member but uses the name “Papa Emeritus” or “Papa Nihil” while other group members are addressed as Nameless Ghouls.
The Grammy-winning band currently has eight members, with seven of the members wearing identical face-concealing costumes and are known as Nameless Ghouls while the frontman, Forge (Papa Emeritus) uses a prosthetic mask and black or multicolored eye makeup along with cardinal vestments to play the character of Papa Emeritus represented as a demonic Anti-pope.
Ghost’s existence has been strictly an anonymous band. Tobias Forge gave up his identity just in 2017 due to a feud with past band members. The other band members remain anonymous. The portrayal of a catholic pope by the band’s frontman has raised controversies and has led new listeners to ask questions like: is Ghost a Christian band? Some listeners in need of good music bands are posing the same question. If you are in any of these categories, read down as this article will provide answers to your question.
Is Ghost a Religious Band?
A religious song can be classified as a song written as a devotional to any given faith. A religious band produces songs based on religious influences and these songs vary based on the type of religion.
Members of the band have not given any details about their religious backgrounds. The Nameless Ghouls do not grant public interviews and there is no information about their personal lives.
However, as a band, Ghost has been very expressive of their beliefs in the Satanic religion. Their songs, music videos, concepts, and even live performances have been described as Satanic in nature.
The band’s first album “Opus Eponymous” released in 2010 talked about the arrival of the Devil using biblical terms. Other albums by the band talk about the presence of the Devil or the “Antichrist” as popularly known, on earth. Below is a song by the band that contains a deep spiritual message about Satanism:
“ Believe In One God Do We
Satan Almighty
The Uncreator Of Heaven And Soul
And The Invisible And The visible
And In His Son
Begotten Of Father
By Whom All Things Shall Be Unmade
Who For Man And His Damnation
Rise From Hell
From Sitteth On The Left Hand Of His Father
From Thes, Shall Come To Judge
Out Of One Substance
Whose Kingdom Shall Have No End
Hear Our Satan Prayer
Our Anti-Nicene Creed
For The Coming Of Seed”
What kind of Music Band is Ghost?
Ghost has been known for incorporating different music genres to produce harmonic and classic sounds. The band is popularly known as a hard rock band, however, they have employed other genres like; heavy metal, doom metal, pop rock, progressive rock, and psychedelic rock.
These genres of music are characterized by aggressive and vigorous vocals, distorted electric guitar, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats, slow tempo and heavier sounds intended to evoke a sense of dread and impending doom, poetic lyrics, electronic influences, and reference to hallucinogenic drugs amongst others.
Doom metal is a fusion genre of death doom, gothic doom, stoner metal, and black doom. This genre is defined by down-tuned instruments, heavy guitar tone, minor tonality and slow tempos, gloomy and pessimistic lyrics, and occult and pagan imagery.
The themes prevalent in songs by Ghost include; religion, death, suffering, depression, grief, anger, dread, and fear. The band is popular for its eccentric on-stage presence, creativity, and theatrical performances. They mentioned that they are influenced by everything ranging from classic rock to the extreme underground metal band of the 80s, film scores, and the grandeur of emotional harmonic music.
The band also stated that they do not intend to be just a metal band, rather they’ll employ diverse writing styles to be able to deliver unique sounds to their fans. According to one Nameless Ghoul, “we tried to deliberately make every song have its signature.”
The band’s theological answers to philosophical questions in pop culture have made them popular in the metal scene and have garnered them a lot of fans. The band currently has 5 studio albums that have received several nominations and awards. Their most recent album “Impera” released in 2022 emerged as the favorite rock album in the American Music Awards. The band’s single “Cirice” won the Grammy awards as best metal performance in 2016.
Ghost has also been nominated for and won several awards like; Bandit Rock Awards, Grammy Awards, and Kerrang! Awards, Loudwire Music Awards, Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards, and P3 Gold Awards.
A Christian band is a band whose songs are centered on the teachings, pillars, and principles of Christianity. Songs by a Christian band contain Christian themes and messages and make references to the Bible.
Members of a Christian band must identify as Christians and this should also be reflected in their lifestyles. It is not enough to label the band “a Christian band”, without the lyrical composition, themes, and other components of the band’s music reflecting Christianity.
Different Christian bands have adopted music styles and genres like; metalcore, hip-hop, pop, blues, folk, and rap to make their songs exciting and appealing to diverse audiences.
Ghost is not a Christian band. The band is not affiliated with Christianity. The band portrays Satanism as seen in their stage performances, cover art, music videos, and graphics.
Ghost Band Christian Songs
Some songs by Ghost contain some Christian and biblical influences which are used to portray how people deal with a supreme or spiritual being. However, songs by the band do not promote Christianity, spread the gospel, or contain other elements to be qualified as a Christian song. As such, the band has no Christian songs.
Is Ghost a Satanic Band?
Satanic religion is one in which members believe in Satan, also called Antichrist or Demon, who is believed to be the central figure of Satanism. One will identify a Satanic band from its songs, music style, beliefs, and practices. Their songs glorify the Devil and promote demon worship.
To be labeled a Satanic band, such a band must possess the features listed above. Ghost’s lyrics, music videos, concepts, and visuals are satanic. Satanism and religious imagery have always been linked with heavy metal music and Ghost has taken this to another level.
During live performances, the band decorates the stage like an evil church and the artists are fronted by a Satanic priestlike figure dressed in a catholic pope’s regalia. The prosthetic mask and makeup make the outfit look demonic. Other members of the band wear identical face-concealing costumes that make them look scary and represent the band’s name.
Ghost revealed that the band’s imagery is influenced by the band’s love for horror films and the traditions of Scandinavian metal. The band’s leader, Forge suggested that they wear black hooded robes and stay anonymous. They are only identified as the “Nameless Ghouls”, while the frontman dresses in a pope’s regalia and paints his face to resemble a skull leading to their choice of name “Ghost”. One of the Nameless Ghouls in an interview stated why the band conceals its identity. According to him, they do that to allow the audience to focus on their music and artwork instead of the members.
The band’s Satanic themes and styles have caused problems to them in countries like the U.S. At one point, their music was banned from the mainstream media but lately, it has started gaining acceptance. Their music blatantly makes use of Satanic lyrics infused with sexuality, blasphemy, doomsday, devil glorification, and other Satanic elements. Below are typical songs by the band with their usual Satanic elements:
“Depth of Satan’s Eye” by Ghost
Through scapes of murmur
Noisy walls of sound
Without a starlit night
Shores are nowhere to be found
On seas of wonder
Ye confused strays
Without a guiding light
You see no ways
Into the eyes of fire
Into the gaze ablaze
Into the burning light
Of Satan’s rays
Into the source of wisdom
Beyond the Bible lies
Into the endless depth
Of Satan’s eyes
“Monstrance Clock” by Ghost
“ Come together
Together as one
Come together
For Lucifer’s son
To the sound of the end of the day
Mesmerized, the assembled sway
Black candles burn, and all minds aligned
Hypnotizing horns of a ram
Paralyzing pentagram
And the eerie sound of the monstrance clock
Conclusion
Ghost has been very expressive about its Satanic beliefs. From the band’s name, themes, concept, and imagery, one can easily decipher that the band is Satanic in nature. Though members of the band are unknown and there is no information on their backgrounds, the band has been collectively identified as a Satanic band. The band has only used Christian terms for blasphemy and has no other affiliation with Christianity.
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Ghost: The True Story of Death, Religion and Rock & Roll Behind Metal's Strangest Band
"I have a hard time explaining what could have been. I just know that I was put in a situation where I felt that it was the time to do this because I have no choice anyway."
Tobias Forge is talking about the fact that he's speaking with Revolver as Tobias Forge. He's sitting in the upstairs lounge at a Los Angeles photography studio. He's wearing jeans and a leather jacket. He's sipping coffee. In the past, this scene would look very different. Forge would only be wearing street clothes if he were being interviewed over the phone. If we were talking in person — as we are now — he'd be wearing the full facemask and tailored tunic of a "Nameless Ghoul," the interchangeable stage moniker he gives to all of the musicians who play with him in Sweden's Grammy-winning occult-rock act Ghost.
Forge doesn't even look like a dude who might be in a band, much less a band like Ghost. He's got short hair. He's clean-shaven. He's well manicured. He's exceedingly polite. He speaks with a Swedish accent and could easily pass for a grad student at UCLA, albeit a particularly pale one. You'd never know that he's secretly into Satan. You'd never know the truth.
As Ghost's vocalist, songwriter and all-around mastermind, Forge dreamed up a successive string of satanic popes — Papa Emeritus I, II and III — one for each of the band's first three albums. The characters appeared onstage in skull makeup and three-cornered papal mitre, singing odes to Lucifer and songs about zombie queens, about imaginary schoolgirls with psychic powers, and about very real Hungarian countesses who bathed in the blood of virgins. But Papa never gave interviews. For press purposes, Forge would pose as a Nameless Ghoul instead. And now, on Ghost's fourth and latest album, Prequelle , a "new" frontman has emerged: Cardinal Copia.
Confused yet? Well, that's because it's supposed to be confusing — or at least misleading. For the first seven years of the band's public existence, Forge did everything in his power to preserve his anonymity. Obfuscation, denial and misdirection were the orders of the day. He was — and is — the rarest of rock stars: Rather than craving the spotlight, he actively avoided it. "It goes against the idea of being a person onstage: wanting not to be seen," he observes. "And that proved to be more or less impossible. So that makes the story a little different because we weren't building our brand on the indulgence of sort of masturbating in the personal cult."
But now some former Nameless Ghouls have filed a lawsuit. They're suing Forge for money they say he owes them. Naturally, his real name appears in the legal documents. As a result, Forge's astonishing run of anonymity has come to a close. His hand has been forced. He's been outed. But the devil, as usual, is in the details. "Once the spotlight is cast on you, you can either step out of it and hope it won't follow you, or you have to speak," Forge acknowledges. "But you have to do something because people are watching. And I definitely know that I'm too far from the shore that I started off from to not realize the severity of the situation. I felt like if this is as good as I think it is and what I've made people believe — and what people in turn have made me believe that it is, it should stand for a little bit of remodeling."
The "it" he refers to is Ghost. And the remodeling is extensive, cosmetically speaking. As of last year, Forge has an entirely new cast of Nameless Ghouls. Papa Emeritus III, singer on 2015's Meliora and 2016's Popestar EP, is no more. Cardinal Copia is the new frontman. Of course, Forge is the Cardinal. And he still writes all of Ghost's songs. But while many fans have suspected this for some time, now they know . "If there is anyone who's sort of questioning the new stance, [ Ghost ] is still based on the same modus operandi," he says. "The only difference is, I've sort of mentioned my name."
In the spirit of full disclosure: I've known Tobias Forge since April of 2013. That was when my band, Ides of Gemini, was the support act on Ghost's second North American tour. In those days, very few people knew the true identities of the group's members. As part of the tour arrangement, my bandmates and I had to sign a contract agreeing not to take photos of any member of Ghost while they were out of costume.
Of course, the band's fans signed no such agreement. Which makes what I witnessed on that tour all the more fascinating. On most nights, fans would wait by Ghost's tour bus after the show to meet the band and shag autographs. Forge and his bandmates would stroll out of the venue in their regular clothes, fully acknowledging that they were the men behind the masks. They'd shake hands, sign records and chitchat. Not once did I see a fan reach for a phone or a camera to snap a photo. Not once in an entire month, in 22 cities across the U.S. and Canada. And yet the social media age was well underway. The general public did not hesitate to post close-ups of the soggy burrito they ate for lunch, much less photos of an encounter with a prominent musician. But the folks who came to those gigs had no desire to expose anyone. They didn't want to demystify the show they had just seen. They wanted to share the fantasy.
Forge has a theory about this phenomenon. While other groups that came up during the early days of social media relied on those platforms not only for promoting the band itself, but for promoting the members individually, Ghost short-circuited this process by not allowing the individual members to publicly acknowledge they were even in the group. "[ Usually ] you have a band and then you have four or five members who are posting photos of everything that they're doing, and that combined creates this public image of the band," he explains. "And since that was obviously an absolute no-no with Ghost — still is — and we were overcompensating with an image, people started focusing on the image [ instead ]. And I guess they were appreciating the fact that we were creating this forum in which they could, in a slightly old-school way, imagine things rather than having it sort of smeared in your face the way that you would if you were a fan of a sentence-for-a-name band where you know everything [ and ] there's no secrets whatsoever."
PAPA COMES ALIVE
Ghost was born in 2006, when Forge wrote a song called "Stand by Him." A chugging, melodic paean to Satan that fused the metallic guitars of Mercyful Fate with the sunny vocal harmonies of Blue Öyster Cult and high liturgical atmosphere, it was unlike anything he'd written in the past. He called his friend Gustaf Lindström to help him record it. The two had played together in the short-lived death-metal outfit Repugnant, which at one point included future members of In Solitude and Tribulation. "Stand by Him" would later appear with English lyrics on Ghost's 2010 debut, Opus Eponymous , but at this early stage its words were in Swedish. "It sounded great, but I didn't really know what it was," Forge recalls. "Occult rock is now obviously a very common term but at that point [ the song ] just felt oddly attractive. I told Gustaf, 'If I can write two more like this, we can definitely call it something and do something with it.'"
In early 2008, the duo hit the studio to record the first three Ghost songs: "Stand by Him," "Prime Mover" and "Death Knell." "I write everything on drums and bass [ as well as guitar ], so I'd already sort of figured the songs out," Forge explains. "We had a drum station, a bass station, a guitar station and a vocal station and just circled around. At the end of that weekend, we had three songs recorded."
Immediately obvious: The material's satanic lyrics and vintage horror-movie vibe were at odds with Forge's choirboy looks. "This definitely does not sound like two dudes that look like you and I," Forge remembers telling Lindström. "With my other projects, I was definitely missing that horror aspect. For me, this needs to be a theater band. And if we're gonna do a theater band, we should be anonymous. It was completely juxtaposed to normal rock showmanship, I guess. It was very clear to me that we cannot just get a band together and rehearse and then go out and play live. We needed to maybe get a whole record recorded and release something and then maybe we could play at Roadburn."
He already had the band name. "We gotta call this Ghost," Forge recalls. "That was more or less simultaneous to the recording."
There was a snag, though: Forge had no desire to be the singer. He wanted to play guitar. "Even when I was a kid, I always sort of identified myself with Keith Richards and Slash more than the singers of the bands," he says. "And even though I absolutely adore Mick Jagger in 1982, the way he looked and the way he performed, I wanted more to be the guitar player who was cool and smoked a cigarette without coughing. And so I was like, 'These are just demos with my vocals.' They were gonna be guide vocals."
Forge's first choice for the vocalist position was Messiah Marcolin, former singer for Swedish doom masters Candlemass. But Marcolin turned him down. Forge then approached Mats Levén, a veteran Swedish vocalist who did a brief stint in guitar wizard Yngwie Malmsteen's band and has since become the latest singer of Candlemass. But Levén passed, as well. So did Christer Göransson of Mindless Sinner, Eighties metal heroes from Forge's hometown of Linköping, Sweden. ("He said, 'I have my own band and this seems a little bit goofy,'" Forge recalls.) So did JB Christoffersson of Grand Magus. Forge became Ghost's singer by default.
At the time, Forge was in his late twenties. He was married, with twin infant daughters. He worked at a call center for a Swedish mobile phone company. Ghost was his sixth band. "You can regard my life and say that not a whole lot happened before that," he says. "I had two kids and a social life and [ getting married ] was a big step in life, but career-wise and [ in terms of ] fulfilling yourself and touring goals, it was definitely 29 years of what felt like non-activity."
Then he posted the Ghost demos on MySpace. "This page we had was all very, very clandestine," he recalls. "I think it said 'Ghost,' but from what I remember, it was a picture of a cathedral in the moonlight and it just said 'satanic doom' or something like that — very, very simple. I really tried to narrow down the demographics so it was people [ who ] were into bands that I sort of figured that we were, in one way or form, similar to. That was anything from Blue Öyster Cult to Pentagram to Saint Vitus and that whole doom scene — Candlemass, obviously — Angel Witch, Demon … You know, anybody that liked dark rock with some sort of melody in it."
Within two days of posting the tracks, Forge was being contacted by record labels and managers from around the globe. "We went from absolutely nothing, a complete unknown — maybe 10 people in the world knew about it before that — and 48 hours later the band was already being approached by all kinds of people," he enthuses. "My career trajectory changed more in those 24 to 48 hours than I had ever experienced in my life."
Ghost premiered on March 12th, 2010. That's when Forge posted the first songs online. It's also the day his brother Sebastian died. "I didn't know at the time, but he had a heart disease that was, there's an elegant word for it that I don't remember, but apparently there's a condition where your [ heart ] muscles basically stiffen up," he explains. "So unfortunately, he passed away literally on the day Ghost went public. That night, my whole life changed."
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG SATANIST
Tobias Forge is standing in a church. He's six or seven years old. He's with his mom. She works in a gallery. She appreciates art. She wants her son to appreciate art, too. "She was always very keen on taking me to churches," he explains. "She might say now in older age that she's sort of borderline religious, but back then it was just treating churches like museums."
One particular church in Linköping stood out. It was built in the 1500s. It was Catholic. It was creepy. "It had that evil feel, with a lot of old, scary paintings and big stained-glass windows and all that stuff I've sort of carried forth with me," Forge says. "It felt like a magical place. On the other hand, I think it triggered a lot of the opposition that made me, in my adolescence, so unquestionably throw my hands into the hands of Satan."
Of course, there were other triggers, as well — namely a wicked stepmother and an ill-tempered schoolteacher. "I didn't see my stepmother very often, maybe every other weekend," Forge explains. "I understand now that I was the kid that [ my father ] had from a previous relationship and I was an irritation in their new family, but she just happened to be religious, as well. And she was very strict. And sometimes she sort of did that in the name of Christ, which did not paint me a very nice picture of Christian people."
The schoolteacher was even worse. Forge was in her classroom for the first and second grades. She was in her sixties, bordering on retirement, and she regarded the era of corporal punishment in schools as a lost golden age. "She was very sour, very strict, very mean," Forge laments. "Had it not been for the fact that it was illegal, she would have definitely hit us. She was a no-bullshit sort of woman, but completely without humor. There was no charm whatsoever. What I remember is that she imposed a lot of religion classes on us — more than I think was according to the curriculum. She just represented this sanctimonious authority that I hated. And that in combination with the alienation I felt every other weekend going to [ my stepmother's ] home that was also sort of infiltrated by religion definitely made me run headfirst into the arms of the devil."
Luckily, Forge's older brother, Sebastian, was there to provide some rock & roll rebellion. "When I was three or four, my brother gave me a few records that I guess he bought for himself," he explains. "A Siouxsie and the Banshees record, a Kim Wilde record, a Rainbow record and a Kiss record. That was Love Gun and I was like, 'Whoa!' And he just said, 'Uh, you can have it.' Technically it was just staying in my room, you know, so it wasn't going far. He was very cool."
Forge says his childhood revolved around his mother and brother. But Sebastian was 13 years older. When Sebastian moved out at age 19, Forge essentially became an only child. "I've always spent a lot of time in my imaginary world with records and films and in books and papers and magazines," he says. "And maybe it goes without saying, but there was very little censorship in our home. There was a little bit of a guiding hand or someone explaining the horror film I'd seen on TV. It was like an explanation of what we're seeing: 'It's fake. That's not real blood.' So from very early on I had a very deep fascination with cinema."
By now, it's 1987. Forge is just six years old. But the key components of Ghost are already starting to converge. Rock bands wearing makeup? Check. Horror flicks? Check. A fascination with Christian symbols and architecture? Check. An ever-increasing sense of religion as a control mechanism? Double check. But you can thank his big brother for making the final connection between rock music and Satan — with an assist from Nikki Sixx. "Sebastian also gave me Shout at the Devil by Mötley Crüe," Forge explains. "That was a record that actually scared me. I loved it, but I found it very, very terrifying — especially the intro. A little bit later, I also started liking the Rolling Stones a lot, and with their discography you had 'Sympathy for the Devil' and Their Satanic Majesties Request ."
Wide-eyed screenings of a few of the Eighties' most entertaining satanic-panic movies followed, as did trips to the sci-fi bookstore in Stockholm, where Forge purchased a copy of the dubious black-magic grimoire, Necronomicon . By fifth grade, he was drawing upside-down crosses on his notebooks like the card-carrying hesher he had become. But he traces most of it back to Sebastian, who provided him with the building blocks for Ghost at a ridiculously early age. "My brother had an immense impact on me," he concedes. "He had a massive music interest, he always rented films. He had a lot of friends who were also in bands and so there was a great influx of teenage culture in our house. When I was three, he was 16, so I was exposed to a lot of things that you might not normally be exposed to when you're three years old. He was very kind and very caretaking and, I guess because of the vast age difference, he didn't object to me being around."
When Sebastian passed away unexpectedly on the exact day Tobias posted the first Ghost songs online, Forge felt a distinct transference of energy. "Ever since then, it's hard not to feel that there might have been some sort of universal trade-off, like he was just giving me a big push in the back and it hasn't stopped since," he ventures. "To take one loss and then you accumulate the worth of that and sort of bake it into, like, a power bun. You remember in Back to the Future III when he has those logs of wood that he spiked with some sort of shit that makes the locomotive move faster? So far it feels like that's how I've been able to sort of redirect. It's like a mental aikido."
RATTUS NORVEGICUS
If there's a recurring theme on Ghost's new album, it's rats — of both the long-tailed rodent and human-garbage varieties. Prequelle songs like "See the Light" and, uh, "Rats" feature Forge singing about the toothy little fuckers that carried the Black Plague through Europe during medieval times. But he's also talking about the proverbial rats of the here and now: politicians with the power to kick off the apocalypse, nuclear or otherwise. "I think that there's a similarity between today and what went on in the 1340s and 1350s in the sense that it feels like our world is just about to end," he says. "On a brighter note, that has happened many times. It happens as we speak: I mean, if you ask someone who is from Aleppo, he or she will probably tell you that his or her world just disintegrated. So the end of the world happens every now and then in someplace. But between Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, North Korea, ISIS, the world economy, China and all these things, there's an overall sort of feeling that we don't know what's gonna happen."
That uncertainty is only exacerbated by the widespread regression of human discourse via social media. "For many, many years in modern life we prided ourselves on greater morals and being smarter than we were in the Middle Ages," Forge explains. "But I think that online mannerisms are very close to open-square stonings many hundreds of years ago when people were fucking barbarians."
He points specifically to online bullying. "Twenty years ago, before the internet and before social media, if you were a kid who was bullied, at least you had the luxury of being able to shut the door and leave the bullies outside," he says. "It was something that took place in the confines of school or [ on ] the way home from school. If you were spoken of in negative terms, it might not reach you, whereas now you cannot hide. You're constantly in the spotlight, open to anyone's spite. And I don't think that that's necessarily a good power to hand over to man."
Ultimately, then, the rats are us. "Rats are a disease-spreading enemy in great numbers that come from all over, that surround you," Forge offers. "Rats come from the sewer. They can come up from your toilet. They can come up through your sink. They're in your walls, if you're unlucky."
He's sure it's all leading somewhere, but Forge doesn't claim to have a crystal ball. "We're at a point where something needs to shift, but I don't have the answer," he concludes. "I don't think the world will implode or disintegrate, but I think that it needs to shift somehow. And it will."
There's another aspect to Prequelle that might not be immediately apparent: the age-old story of the master and the apprentice, of the older generation passing the torch to the younger. "That's why we have a new guy," Forge explains. "The Cardinal is not the boss. He's just the toastmaster. A cardinal is junior to a pope figure. We still have Papa Emeritus [ Zero, a.k.a. Papa Nihil ] but he's passing on. He needs to teach the Cardinal to become a pope, to earn his skull paint."
Forge says it was always the plan for Ghost to have a succession of Papas. Each one has a built-in term limit — kinda like presidents. "And then there was gonna be a moment in time where you have to sort of chew through a little bit of an underdog person that you might not like," he says with a laugh. "So we end up with this character that I'm not even fond of myself. He's new and he is an imposter and he hasn't proven himself yet. But if he does, he will become Papa IV."
As for the previous Papas, Ghost revealed in an April video that they'd been slain to make way for Copia; their bodies have been on display for VIP ticket-holders on the band's trek in support of Prequelle . "They're gonna be put back in use now on tour," Forge says playfully, "but slightly less animated than before."
It's all part of his grand plan. "Obviously Ghost and everything that comes with it is based very much on a rock fan perspective," he says. "It's my way of trying to procreate with rock history. I've achieved so many things now that 10 or 15 years ago were inconceivable. And I'm not at all talking about monetary gain. I'm talking about just merging with the night, like with a dream of whatever it was that I encountered as a child. That's still the thing I'm trying to capture."
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Unveiling the Truth: Is Ghost The Band Christian?
Ghost, the Swedish rock band, has been making waves in the music industry with their unique sound, controversial image, and cryptic lyrics. With their theatrical performances and satanic imagery, many have questioned whether the band has any connection to Christianity or if their beliefs fall on the darker side of the spectrum.
While some may argue that Ghost’s satanic imagery is simply for show, others believe that the band is deeply rooted in the occult and the dark arts. In this article, we will explore the truth behind Ghost’s image and delve into the band’s beliefs and musicality.
Join us on a journey to uncover whether Ghost is truly a satanic band or if there is more than meets the eye. Strap in and get ready to discover the hidden truths and secrets behind Ghost’s music.
Keep reading to discover the truth behind Ghost’s religious beliefs, musical influences, and lyrical themes. You won’t want to miss what we have in store for you.
Discovering the Musicality of Ghost
Ghost is known for their unique and haunting sound that has captured the attention of fans worldwide. The band has been praised for their ability to blend metal and rock with elements of pop and classical music .
Many of Ghost’s songs feature powerful and catchy riffs, often with a dark and brooding undertone. The band’s melodic approach to songwriting sets them apart from other metal and rock acts, with intricate harmonies and memorable hooks that stay with listeners long after the song has ended.
Ghost’s musicality is further elevated by their use of theatrics and visuals during live performances. The band’s elaborate costumes and stage props add to the overall experience and contribute to the eerie atmosphere that surrounds their music.
Despite their controversial image and dark themes, Ghost’s musicality has earned them critical acclaim and a loyal fan base. Their ability to push boundaries and create music that is both unique and accessible makes them one of the most exciting bands in modern rock.
The Unique Sound of Ghost
Diversity: Ghost’s musical style is a unique blend of several genres, including hard rock, heavy metal, and pop. The band’s music is characterized by its catchy melodies, intricate guitar riffs, and powerful vocals.
Theatrics: Ghost’s music is not only about the sound but also the theatrics that come with their performances. The band’s stage presence is heavily influenced by the aesthetics of classic horror movies, with its members dressing up in elaborate costumes and using pyrotechnics to enhance the visual experience.
Unconventional Instruments: Ghost is known for using unconventional instruments in their music, such as the organ, which adds a gothic and eerie atmosphere to their sound. The band’s use of symphonic elements also makes their music stand out from other heavy metal bands.
The Evolution of their Sound: Ghost’s sound has evolved over the years, with the band experimenting with different styles and sounds. Their latest album, “Prequelle,” is a prime example of this evolution, with its more melodic and pop-influenced sound.
Ghost’s unique sound is a significant part of their appeal, drawing in fans from all over the world. Their music is not only powerful and catchy but also tells a story, making it a truly immersive experience for listeners.
The Influence of Classic Rock in Ghost’s Music
Ghosts music is heavily influenced by classic rock bands from the 70s and 80s, such as Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, and Kiss. Doom metal is a significant inspiration for Ghost’s music, along with occult rock , which is a genre that blends hard rock with dark, supernatural themes.
The band’s love for classic rock can be heard in their use of vintage instruments and equipment, such as old-school analog synthesizers and Hammond organs. Guitar solos , which were a staple of classic rock, also play a significant role in Ghost’s music, adding to the retro feel of their sound.
Ghost’s music is also heavily influenced by the theatricality of classic rock performances. The band’s live shows feature elaborate costumes and stage props, creating an immersive experience for the audience.
While the band’s sound is undeniably influenced by classic rock, Ghost has managed to create a unique sound that blends different genres and styles into something entirely their own.
Understanding the Band’s Controversial Image
Ghost’s appearance is often a topic of discussion, as the band is known for their macabre and theatrical image. The members of the band perform in elaborate costumes and wear intricate face paint, adding to their unique stage presence. This controversial image has often sparked debate among fans and critics alike, with some arguing that it is merely a gimmick while others see it as an integral part of the band’s artistic vision.
Despite the controversy, the band’s image has undoubtedly contributed to their success, helping them to stand out in the crowded world of heavy metal music. Many fans appreciate the band’s commitment to their unique image, which has become synonymous with their music and live performances.
While some may find the band’s image to be unsettling or even offensive, it is clear that Ghost has a dedicated following that appreciates their creative vision and unique approach to heavy metal music.
Ghosts’s use of satanic imagery and symbolism in their music and stage performances has been a subject of controversy and fascination among fans and critics alike. Lucifer , devils , and other dark elements are frequently referenced in their lyrics and visuals, leading many to wonder about the band’s beliefs and intentions.
Some have accused Ghost of promoting Satanism, while others argue that they are simply using the imagery as a theatrical device. Nevertheless, the band’s provocative image has undoubtedly contributed to their unique and captivating appeal, attracting legions of dedicated fans worldwide.
Many of Ghost’s songs also explore themes of darkness, temptation, and the supernatural, further cementing their mysterious and alluring image. Despite the controversy, there is no denying the power and impact of Ghost’s artistic vision and musical talents.
Whether you see Ghost as a celebration of darkness or a playful tribute to the macabre, their music and image remain a fascinating and compelling subject for discussion and analysis.
The Message Behind Ghost’s Shocking Image
Despite the controversy surrounding Ghost’s satanic image, the band’s message is not what it seems. Their use of provocative and shocking imagery is intentional and serves as a commentary on society and organized religion.
Subverting Expectations: The band’s use of religious and satanic imagery is meant to shock and subvert expectations. They aim to challenge the status quo and expose the hypocrisy of organized religion.
Social Commentary: Ghost’s music is rife with social commentary, from criticizing the dangers of blind faith to highlighting the consequences of societal pressure. The band uses their image to convey a deeper message about the state of society.
Creative Expression: Ghost’s image is a result of creative expression and a desire to stand out in the music industry. By using controversial imagery, the band has garnered attention and has become a well-known name in the metal scene.
Despite their shocking image, Ghost’s message is one of critical thinking, individualism, and creativity. Their music and image are not meant to be taken at face value, but rather as a call to question society’s norms and expectations.
Examining the Lyrics of Ghost’s Hit Songs
Ghost is a Swedish heavy metal band that has captured the hearts of many with their music, striking stage presence, and haunting visuals. Their lyrics are often cryptic, filled with occult imagery and references to the supernatural. A standout feature of their music is the way they effortlessly blend catchy choruses with dark, eerie verses. This article will delve into five of their hit songs, examining the lyrics in-depth to gain insight into their meaning and symbolism.
Devil Church is a chilling instrumental piece that sets the tone for the album “Meliora”. Despite its lack of lyrics, the track exudes a sense of darkness, with its haunting melody and the sound of church bells ringing in the background. It’s almost as if the listener is being summoned to the devil’s lair. The track ends with the sound of a door slamming shut, leaving the listener feeling as though they’ve just been shut inside the church with the devil.
The next song on our list is Cirice , a song that won Ghost a Grammy award for Best Metal Performance in 201The lyrics tell the story of a young girl who has been branded a witch and sentenced to burn at the stake. The chorus is catchy, but the verses are filled with dread and despair, painting a picture of a world that is quick to condemn those who don’t fit in.
Year Zero is a song that explores the theme of the antichrist rising to power. The lyrics describe a world in chaos, with the rise of a new order that seeks to destroy everything that has come before. The song’s chorus is haunting, with its repeated chant of “Hail Satan, Archangelo.” The song is a commentary on the corrupting nature of power and the dangers of blindly following authority.
Dance Macabre is a song that’s a departure from the dark, sinister sound of many of Ghost’s other songs. It’s a catchy, upbeat track that tells the story of a love affair between two people at a party. Despite its upbeat melody, the lyrics are still infused with the supernatural, with the chorus referencing the “undead in the aisles.” It’s a reminder that even when things seem fun and carefree, there’s always an undercurrent of darkness lurking beneath the surface.
The final song on our list is He Is , a tribute to Satan that is surprisingly uplifting. The lyrics describe the devil as a figure of beauty and light, a being who provides solace and comfort to those who are lost. The chorus is especially powerful, with its repeated line “He is, he’s the shining and the light without whom I cannot see.” The song is a testament to the power of belief and the way that people can find meaning and purpose in even the darkest of places.
The Hidden Meanings of “Square Hammer”
The first verse of “Square Hammer” is a reference to the biblical story of the fall of Lucifer from heaven. The line “Can’t you see that you’re lost without me?” is a nod to Lucifer’s prideful attitude and belief that he is superior to God. The line “In the night, we’ll take a walk, it’s nothing strange” is a reference to the devil’s temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
The chorus of “Square Hammer” is a call to embrace the darkness within ourselves. The line “Are you ready to swear right here, right now, before the devil?” is a challenge to reject traditional religious values and embrace a more individualistic, hedonistic lifestyle. The line “It’s time for you to embrace your dark side” encourages listeners to embrace their inner demons and reject societal norms.
The second verse of “Square Hammer” is a commentary on the corrupting influence of power. The line “I’m a preacher with a message for you, my child” is a nod to the way that religious leaders can exploit their authority for personal gain. The line “I can heal your pain, I can make you feel alive” is a reference to the way that powerful people can manipulate others by offering false promises of salvation.
The bridge of “Square Hammer” is a warning about the dangers of blindly following charismatic leaders. The line “We’re marching on, the tides of doom have come” is a reference to the way that groups can become caught up in destructive ideologies. The line “We’re gonna stand up, keepin’ danger alive” is a call to action, urging listeners to resist the pull of groupthink and to embrace their own individuality.
The hidden meanings behind “Square Hammer” are a testament to the depth and complexity of Ghost’s songwriting. By exploring themes of power, corruption, and individuality, the band challenges listeners to think critically about their own beliefs and values. Whether you’re a die-hard fan or just discovering the band for the first time, “Square Hammer” is a powerful and thought-provoking song that is sure to leave a lasting impression.
The Religious Allusions in “He Is”
Ghost’s song “He Is” from their 2015 album “Meliora” contains various religious allusions throughout the lyrics. The song is an ode to Satan and his dominion over the world, but it also contains references to other religious themes and figures.
The opening line, “We’re standing here by the abyss”, is a reference to the abyss mentioned in the book of Revelations in the Bible, which is a place of ultimate chaos and destruction. The line “We’re Satan’s pawns” is an allusion to the concept of Satan as the ruler of the world and his control over human actions.
The chorus of the song contains references to the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity, with the lyrics “He is, He’s the shining and the light without whom I cannot see, and He is insurrection, he is spite, he’s the force that made me be.” The lyrics suggest that Satan is the force behind everything, including creation, and that he is the only source of truth and light in the world.
- The line “He is the shining and the light” refers to Jesus Christ, who is often referred to as the “Light of the World” in Christian theology.
- The line “He is insurrection” is a reference to the rebellion of Lucifer against God, which resulted in his banishment from heaven and his role as the ruler of hell.
- The line “He is spite” suggests that Satan is a vengeful figure, seeking to punish those who go against him.
- The final line, “he’s the force that made me be,” suggests that Satan is the source of the singer’s creative inspiration and the driving force behind their existence.
Overall, “He Is” is a song that celebrates the power and influence of Satan, while also incorporating elements of Christian theology and religious imagery. Its lyrics suggest a complex relationship between Satan and humanity, with the devil being portrayed as both a benevolent and malevolent figure.
The Dark and Controversial Themes of “Year Zero”
Ghosts’s hit song “Year Zero” has long been a topic of discussion among fans due to its dark and controversial themes . The song, which is featured on the band’s 2007 album of the same name, explores a dystopian future where the world is ruled by a theocratic government known as the “New Moral World Order”. Here are some of the themes explored in the song:
- Religious Satire: “Year Zero” takes aim at organized religion, portraying a world where the government has replaced traditional religion with a new, oppressive faith that worships the state.
- Political Corruption: The song also criticizes political corruption and the abuse of power by those in authority. It suggests that the ruling class will stop at nothing to maintain their grip on power, even if it means sacrificing their own citizens.
- Sexual Liberation: “Year Zero” also touches on themes of sexual liberation and exploration, suggesting that in a world ruled by a strict moral code, acts of sexual deviance become a form of rebellion.
- Violence and Rebellion: The song portrays a world on the brink of violent rebellion, where citizens are forced to take up arms against their oppressors in order to reclaim their freedom.
“Year Zero” is a provocative and thought-provoking song that challenges listeners to question authority and the status quo. Its dark and controversial themes have made it one of Ghost’s most enduring and talked-about tracks.
Insight into the Members’ Personal Beliefs
Ghost is known for their elaborate costumes, stage performances, and heavy music, but there’s much more to the band than meets the eye. In fact, each member has their own unique personal beliefs that they incorporate into their music and performances. Religion plays a significant role in the band’s music, as well as their personal lives.
Lead vocalist Tobias Forge, who performs under the guise of various characters such as “Papa Emeritus” and “Cardinal Copia,” has discussed his personal beliefs in interviews. Forge identifies as agnostic , meaning he doesn’t claim to know whether a god or gods exist. However, he has also stated that he is interested in the occult and draws inspiration from its teachings.
The other members of Ghost have also discussed their personal beliefs in interviews. Guitarist Martin Persner, who left the band in 2016, has stated that he is a practicing pagan . Bassist Henrik Palm has said that he was raised in a Christian household, but now identifies as an atheist . Keyboardist Per Eriksson has stated that he is a humanist , which is a philosophy that emphasizes the value of human beings, individual freedom, and rational thought.
These personal beliefs are not only reflected in the band’s music but also in their stage performances. Ghost’s live shows often include elaborate theatrical productions, including references to religion, the occult, and other spiritual themes. It’s clear that the members of Ghost are not afraid to explore controversial and thought-provoking themes in their music and performances.
Despite their personal beliefs, the members of Ghost have also been vocal about their political beliefs. Forge has criticized the Swedish government for what he sees as their lack of support for the arts, and the band has been involved in activism efforts to combat climate change.
Overall, the personal beliefs of the members of Ghost add an extra layer of complexity to their already complex music and performances. It’s clear that the band is not just interested in making music but in exploring deeper themes and ideas through their art.
Tobias Forge’s Views on Religion and Spirituality
Tobias Forge, the lead vocalist and songwriter for Ghost, has been open about his beliefs when it comes to religion and spirituality. While he was raised Lutheran, he has expressed that he is more interested in spiritual experiences rather than following a specific religion.
Syncretism: Forge has described himself as a “religious magpie,” meaning that he takes bits and pieces from various religions and incorporates them into his own beliefs.
The Occult: The occult has been a significant influence on Forge’s music, lyrics, and stage presence. He has expressed an interest in magic, alchemy, and other mystical practices.
Personal Growth: Forge has emphasized the importance of personal growth and self-discovery in his lyrics. He believes that it is essential to explore and understand one’s own beliefs and experiences to achieve a sense of fulfillment and purpose.
Critical Thinking: Forge has also spoken about the importance of critical thinking when it comes to religion and spirituality. He encourages his fans to question beliefs and ideas, including his own, and to think for themselves rather than blindly following others.
Uncovering the Secret Message Behind Ghost’s Music
For those who delve beyond the surface of Ghost’s music, a hidden message becomes apparent.
The band often uses symbolism to convey their message, such as their use of the Satanic figure, which is more of a political statement than a religious one.
Another example is their use of the year 1969, which represents the year of the founding of the Church of Satan and also coincides with several significant events in American history.
There are also themes of rebellion and anti-establishment in their music, calling for people to break free from societal norms and expectations.
Despite the controversy surrounding their imagery and lyrics, Ghost’s music serves as a commentary on society and a call to action for listeners to think critically and challenge the status quo.
The Hidden Message in Ghost’s Album Covers
Ghost’s album covers are often adorned with intricate artwork that goes beyond mere aesthetics. The imagery used in the artwork is deeply symbolic and often hints at the themes and concepts explored in the music.
For instance, the cover art for the album “Meliora” features an upside-down cross, a common symbol of satanism. However, it also features a depiction of the archangel Michael slaying a dragon, which represents the triumph of good over evil. This juxtaposition of opposing forces is a recurring theme in Ghost’s music.
The cover of the album “Prequelle” features a ghoul wearing a plague doctor’s mask, which references the black plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century. This ties into the album’s themes of death and mortality.
The album “Infestissumam” features an ornate image of a papal-like figure wearing a crown of thorns. This represents the corrupting influence of power and the hypocrisy of religious institutions.
Finally, the artwork for the album “Opus Eponymous” features a winged goat, which is a common symbol of the devil in satanic iconography. This ties into the album’s overarching theme of satanism and the occult.
While Ghost’s album covers may appear to be merely decorative at first glance, they are in fact an important part of the band’s artistic vision, conveying a deeper meaning and message to those willing to delve beneath the surface.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does ghost’s music incorporate religious themes.
Ghost’s music often incorporates religious themes and imagery, including references to Satan, Lucifer, and other figures from Christian mythology. However, the band’s use of these themes is often more complex than a simple celebration of the devil, and can be interpreted in a variety of ways.
What is the band’s stance on organized religion?
Ghost has been known to critique organized religion and its power structures, particularly within the Catholic Church. However, the band has also stated that they are not necessarily against religion or spirituality as a concept, but rather the way it can be manipulated and abused for control and power.
Are any of the band members openly religious?
The religious beliefs of individual band members are not well-known or discussed in the public eye. However, lead singer Tobias Forge has spoken in interviews about his interest in spirituality and the occult, and how these themes influence his songwriting and stage persona.
Have the band’s religious themes caused controversy?
Yes, Ghost’s use of religious themes has sparked controversy in some circles, particularly among more conservative or religiously devout listeners who take offense at the band’s imagery and lyrics. However, the band has also gained a dedicated following of fans who appreciate their unique approach to these themes.
Does Ghost identify as a Christian band?
No, Ghost does not identify as a Christian band, and their music and imagery often subvert or challenge traditional Christian beliefs and symbols. However, the band’s relationship to religion and spirituality is complex and multifaceted, and can be interpreted in a variety of ways by listeners.
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Papal regalia, on-stage rituals and razzle-dazzle rock’n’roll: Why Ghost are the biggest Satanic band on the planet
The wildly successful swedish group are bringing fun and theatrics back to heavy metal. jak hutchcraft meets founder tobias forge to talk blasphemy, steampunk and their wild new album ‘impera’, article bookmarked.
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Ghost frontman Tobias Forge
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“What we’re trying to do is orchestrate a religious event, with all the bombastic nature of a mass, but without the guilt,” explains Tobias Forge, the enigmatic frontman of Swedish metal band Ghost , of a typical gig. “We want you to make you feel good about yourself when you leave.”
For well over a decade, Ghost have been doing a pretty good job of that. Spreading their joyous gospel far and wide, they’re currently in the middle of a massive global arena tour and have just graced the covers of heavy metal bibles Kerrang! and Metal Hammer . In a few days, they release Impera , their extravagant fifth album. They are both very big and very weird – fans of ultra-gothic face paint, expensive-looking masks and dressing up like The Pope. A recipe for cult success maybe, but how did Ghost get so popular?
Let’s go back to the start. This eight-piece metal band began in 2006 in the small, lakeside cathedral city of Linkoping in southern Sweden. Theatre enthusiast and songwriter Tobias Forge had been cutting his teeth in local glam and death metal bands since the mid Nineties, but had long dreamt of being part of something bigger.
What he came up with was the airtight concept of anonymous musicians dressed in papal regalia, flamboyant stage shows in the style of Iron Maiden, and classic rock-edged, AOR-inspired gothic metal. Forge’s aim was to bring the razzle-dazzle of Alice Cooper and Kiss to the 21st century, with softly sung lyrics gunning for organised religion and political corruption. In 2008, he posted three songs on MySpace. Within a year they were signed.
Since then Ghost (originally known as Ghost BC in the US) have released four critically acclaimed albums, won two Grammys and toured the world with Guns N’ Roses and Alice In Chains. They’ve even sold out the Royal Albert Hall. They’ve got plenty of rock star fans – including Dave Grohl, who produced a 2013 EP – but their most important achievement is the dedicated on-the-ground following they’ve cultivated, spanning hardcore kids, veteran rockers and emo teens.
It would be hard to pinpoint a typical Ghost devotee, due to the impressively broad range of fans they attract. You could say it’s a broad church. “Style-wise you have the metal heads and the not-so-metal heads, and the pop girls,” says Forge. “They like Star Wars , they like comic books, they like horror films. They like rock music with a slight nostalgia touch of the Seventies and Eighties.”
Ghost’s frontman and master of ceremonies is currently between gigs. The band played a sold-out show in Cincinnati last night and Forge is gearing up for Milwaukie in a few hours. After their epic American crusade, there’s a run of shows across the UK and Europe – including the 20,000 capacity O2 Arena – to further share the lavish sounds of Impera .
Its 12 tracks don’t stray too far from the extravagant metal of their previous records, full of dark sing-alongs and vintage songwriting that sounds as if rock never entered the Nineties. When it comes to inspiration, Forge name-checks artists as diverse as US punk trailblazers Bad Religion, singer-songwriter Tori Amos and Danish heavy metallers King Diamond. It’s a combination that makes Ghost truly unlike any of their contemporaries and Impera is the sound of a band at their musical peak. Try the gothic groove of single “Call Me Little Sunshine” – a highlight on an album that’s full of them. Not only will it make old fans rejoice, it’s the perfect starting place for the curious and uninitiated.
Mass appeal: the band Ghost
“On this record, we are in a kind of Victorian industrialism,” Forge explains of the concept behind the new LP. “It’s the late 1800s and there’s no city that fully embodies that more than London, so it’s set there.”
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In January the band projected huge, eerie images onto landmarks in the capital, including St Paul’s Cathedral and the Tower of London, to promote the record. Forge cites Tim Burton’s Batman and Bram Stoker’s Dracula as inspirations for the semi-fantasy world of Impera , while closing track “Respite on the Spitalfields” is a story of companionship and fear in the time of Jack the Ripper.
“Not only is it a visually pleasing and interesting era, but it’s similar to today in the sense that the world was also going through a big industrial revolution,” explains Forge, channeling this historian within. “People were made redundant, but back then there were a lot of other jobs. Nowadays, for every invention, for every app that some asshole comes up with, there are so many people who are made completely superfluous. That is not good for humanity.”
Speaking of redundancies, Ghost have gone through four incarnations of Forge’s frontman character over the years. First he was Papa Emeritus I, dressed as a wicked Pope with skeletal black and white makeup, then he became Papa Emeritus II, before Papa Emeritus III and Papa Nihil. Each character is dramatically killed off or replaced at the end of each album campaign, with the new character foreshadowing and teasing the theme of the next record. Impera is the first to see Forge performing as Cardinal Copia aka Papa Emeritus IV, complete with bejeweled robes and immaculate corpse paint.
For the first 11 years of the band’s career, Forge was an anonymous and unnamed frontman, further adding to the mystery of Ghost. But his anonymity was brought to an abrupt end in 2017 when four ex-Ghost bandmates tried to sue him for allegedly cheating them out of their share of profits. Forge maintains that they had “no legal contract” and were paid as session musicians. He won the case but in the process lost the mystique he’d meticulously maintained for over a decade. In 2019 he was quoted as having “slightly mixed emotions” about being unmasked. Now he barely gives it a second thought. The unexpected big reveal made little impact on the hold Ghost have on the imaginations of their fans – if anything, it seems to have brought them even more attention.
Rock n regalia: Ghost in 2021
The fans – who are known as “Ghuleh” if women and “Ghouls” if men – can often be seen dressed in homemade Ghost-inspired attire at gigs; flowing robes, painted faces and ceremonial masks. I ask Forge about his vision and intentions for the live shows, known within the community as “Rituals”.
“Well, it’s theatrical. We are sort of the opposite of Pearl Jam, in that way,” he laughs. The dark side of divinity drives Forge’s creativity. “I’ve always had an intense relationship with organised, linear religion, let’s put it that way. I’m very fascinated with the art and the history of it, but maybe not so much with the rules and the blame and the guilt.”
Ghost’s flirtations with religion have caused some bumps in the road. In 2018, a Christian group prayed outside a gig in Texas, accusing Ghost of “bringing glory to Satan”, and their second album Infestissumam was delayed because manufacturers refused to print its “blasphemous” artwork. I ask Forge whether this kind of reaction is an issue as they continue to ascend into the rock mainstream. “A lot of that [Christian backlash] sort of disappeared after the Eighties,” he shrugs. “You had the crazies or the pastors on TV who came out and said ‘Don’t go and see Ozzy Osbourne! He’s the devil’s advocate!’ But all that did was sell out the show and maybe sell 500,000 more records. They learned their lesson after that.”
I ask if Forge identifies as a Satanist and without hesitation he opens up. “You know, Christianity is to blame for so much evil. And you have Isis, you know. That’s all in the name of God, right?” He goes on to say that modern Satanism is probably closest to his own belief system. “Pop cultural Satanism is all about humanity. It’s all about being able to express yourself and having the ability to. We’re f***ing humanists.” He goes on to say that he’s been invited onto TV debates with various religious leaders but always politely declines. “At the end of the day, I am an entertainer,” he reasons. “We’re here to make people happy, our goal is not to make [religious people] angry.”
It’s true that the world of Ghost is a fun one. There’s a playfulness in their on-stage theatrics, catchy choruses and shock ‘n’ roll celebration. As pop’s major players endlessly share personal content on social media, mystery and myth seem hard to come by. But Ghost have resurrected rock’s arcane and exciting distant past; the epitome of a creative vision well-executed, a cult-following captivated, and the longevity and success that comes with both.
‘Impera’ is released 11 March
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A Lot Of People Don't Know About Ghost, The Satanic Swedish Metal Band
Ghost is definitely a band that people either "get" or not. The Swedish, Catholic-vestment wearing metal quartet isn't the first act in rock history to don costumes (thank you, KISS ), nor the first by far to satirize or excoriate religion. In fact, it may be a misnomer to refer to them as "satanic" at all, given contemporaries such as Deicide, Rotting Christ, or Behemoth. Much of Ghost's music is quite mellow, even tame, not too heavy, fairly melodic, contains absolutely zero growls, and often comes with some proper Sunday-morning pipe organ instrumentals ("Devil Church," we're looking at you). It's practically chill enough to listen to on the beach with a beer.
Ghost has been around for a decade, since their 2010 debut Opus Eponymous , has a discography of four albums, one live album, and twelve singles. Since their debut, they've gained quite a cult (hah) following, complete with wikis and entire, fictional narratives for the band's origins and its members, each of whom play characters with names such as Papa Emeritus (versions I – III), Cardinal Copia, and behind-the-scenes figure Sister Imperator, as outlined in Loudwire . They've gained attention in recent years, especially since 2016's superb, Grammy-winning Meliora , which contained critical successes "Square Hammer," "Cirice," and "From the Pinnacle to the Pit."
From the Pit to the Pinnacle
More than anything, Ghost owes a lot of its recent traction to the clever cultivation of its image, which is a good idea for such an image-focused band. Shticky makeup and miter hats will invariably alienate certain people from getting on board, but they also ensure that Ghost's fans are true believers. Ghost has also proven savvy with its music video production, as evidenced by the Metropolis -inspired, old-timey, silent-movie visuals of the video for "From the Pinnacle to the Pit," a story inspired by the tale of Lucifer's fall.
Ghost has managed to gain popularity even among internal drama and trouble within the band, including a lawsuit filed over royalties in 2017 by 4 former band members, as reported by Metal Injection . In fact, Ghost has gone through 10 band members in as many years, while the nucleus and mastermind of the group: Tobias Forge, has remained. According to Forge, Ghost was always intended to be a group of revolving members, some of whom play live, and some of whom play instrumentals on studio versions of tracks. Forge himself states that he can record and play every instrument, but has favorite musicians who come on board for certain periods of time, or play in live shows (the mask-wearing Nameless Ghouls). In this way, Ghost is more of a psuedo-solo project on par with Josh Homme-led Queens of the Stone Age . It makes sense, though, that these goings on have hindered Ghost's rise to fame in some way.
That being said, it's clear that Ghost has yet to hit their pinnacle. 2018's Prequelle sees the band embracing its identity as a playful fusion of glam and licks, and reveling in it all the while.
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Are they Nameless Ghouls? Who is the real Papa Emeritus? Ghost are perfect enigmas. Here are ten facts you need to know about Sweden’s heavy metal icons.
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Image goes hand in hand with music, whether it’s the skinny black jeans and white hi-tops of thrash metal in the 80s, the flannel and combats of grunge in the 90s, or the comic-book space demons of KISS . Few bands today, however, push the envelope to the point where their theatrics are as important as their music. Ghost is a rare exception. Their very existence comes with a concept, backstory, and elaborate visuals, with these embellishments being as inherent to the band’s performances as guitars or drums. Here, then, are ten facts that uncover the mystery behind the Swedish heavy metal band Ghost.
Listen to the best of Ghost on Apple Music and Spotify .
The Satanic cult
Religious imagery and satanism have forever been intertwined with heavy metal music ; genre pioneers Black Sabbath were masters of marrying the two. But Ghost takes the construct to the next level. Their stage set during live concerts is dressed as a church. The idea is to present music as salvation, with the live show playing the role of a religious service. Then are the musicians: fronted by a satanic priest-like figure in papal regalia who possesses a voice with an unexpectedly enticing charm and vulnerability, backed by a group of cardinals known as the “Nameless Ghouls.”
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Ghost has so far appointed four frontmen. First was Papa Emeritus, who took on vocal duties for their debut album, Opus Eponymous , and its consequent tour. He was replaced in 2012 by Papa Emeritus II, for the Infestissumam cycle; in 2015, his younger brother, Papa Emeritus III, took over for the Meliora run. In September 2017, Papa Emeritus III was publicly ousted while performing in Gothenburg, Sweden, to be replaced by the significantly older Papa Emeritus 0 – later named Papa Nihil, an ancestor to all other Papas. However, Ghost’s new leader was named, in April 2018, as Cardinal Copia, an “apprentice” priest yet to earn his full Ghost regalia.
Since the band’s inception, in 2006, Ghost has maintained a strictly anonymous existence. The various frontmen never gave interviews, instead press duties were handled by the Nameless Ghouls. These are likely to be Ghost mastermind Tobias Forge, who also portrayed each of the Papa characters and is currently serving as Cardinal Copia. Forge was forced to give up his identity in 2017 when former bandmates sued him over royalties. His backing band retain their anonymity and maintain their mystery at record store signings by stamping their ascribed alchemical symbols for fire, water, air, earth, and ether.
Ghost formed around one song
Prior to forming Ghost, Tobias Forge was in the death metal band Repugnant, and sleaze metal band Crashdïet. In 2006 he came up with a riff that he described as “probably the heaviest metal riff that has ever existed.” To accompany it, he penned a chorus that “haunted my dreams.” The song developed into “Stand By Him” from Ghost’s debut album, Opus Eponymous , but Forge knew that he couldn’t carry off such a dark sound with his clean-cut looks. Instead, he created the concept and characters of Ghost as a vehicle for his new musical project.
Forge’s brother died the day Ghost came alive
Further to “Stand By Him,” Forge penned the tracks “Prime Mover” and “Death Knell,” and in 2008 entered a recording studio with former Repugnant bandmate Gustaf Lindström to lay them down. Those songs were later posted onto MySpace on March 12, 2010 and would attract immediate attention from record labels and managers wanting to sign the group. Little did Forge know that, as he uploaded the songs, his brother, Sebastian, would succumb to heart disease later that day. Forge looked up to his brother, who was 13 years older, and introduced him to many of the artists that would later influence Ghost.
Wide-ranging influences
What you see is not necessarily what you get, musically speaking. Though Forge’s main influence was the black metal of King Diamond and Mercyful Fate, you might be surprised to hear a far more prominent pop and AOR influence in Ghost’s music. Though genres as diverse as doom metal, hard rock, prog rock, arena rock, and psychedelic rock have been used to describe Ghost, their sound is rooted in black metal, with Forge adding that they are influenced by “everything ranging from classic rock to the extreme underground metal bands of the 80s to film scores to the grandeur of emotional harmonic music.”
The live band is not the same as the studio one
When the identity of Ghost’s various frontmen was revealed by way of the 2017 royalties dispute, Forge went on the record to describe exactly how he saw the band. He described Ghost as a solo project that utilized hired musicians to translate his work in the live arena. Forge often records all the instruments himself in the studio, calling in his favorite musicians where he feels they will be of good use. And since all touring members of Ghost have other bands anyway, Forge prefers to give them time off between tours so that they can tend to their other projects and come back fresh.
Dave Grohl was once a Nameless Ghoul
Though the identities of the Nameless Ghouls remain a mystery, members are very approachable to fans who hang around the backstage door after the show. However, those die-hards remain respectful to Ghost’s anonymity and any shameless selfies are kept away from social media, so speculation abounds as to who the other members might be. But it was confirmed in an interview with Jack Osbourne, for Fuse News , in August 2013, that Foo Fighters frontman and one-time Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl once donned the Nameless Ghouls costume to play with them live. He had also produced Ghost’s 2013 EP, If You Have Ghost .
Banned in the USA
Ghost’s controversial image, lyrical themes, and artwork haven’t always worked in their favor. When they required a choir for the Infestissumam album, they were unable to find one in Nashville – where they were holed up in the studio – willing to commit the band’s lyrics to tape. Then, when it came to pressing the album, no US manufacturer was willing to take on the project due to the graphic nature of the artwork. In Ghost’s earlier days, too, no chain stores, TV shows or commercial radio stations would touch their music. Mainstream America seems to have warmed to them over the years: Ghost appeared on a Halloween-themed Late Show with Stephen Colbert in October 2015.
Ghost have won multiple awards
Further to their acceptance into mainstream culture, Ghost has won multiple awards in their Swedish homeland. The Grammis are the Swedish equivalent to the American Recording Academy’s Grammys, and Ghost won the award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Album in three consecutive years, for 2014’s Infestissumam , the following year’s Meliora , and the 2016 EP Popestar . They also won a coveted Grammy for Best Metal Performance, for the Meliora track “Cirice,” in 2016, and earned further nominations for Prequelle as Best Rock Album and “Rats’ as Best Rock Song in 2019.
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The true meaning behind Ghost’s Mary On A Cross
How Ghost made 2022’s breakout hit – and exactly what it means
Ghost ’s Tobias Forge has always had a knack for combining blasphemous lyrical imagery with the sweetest of musical caresses. If anyone could infiltrate the social media mainstream with a song that, on the face of it, combined sacrilege with slick pop-rock hooks, it was him.
And so it proved with viral success of Mary on a Cross . In September 2022, a TikTok user uploaded a slowed-down, reverb-heavy version of the three-year-old song to soundtrack a compilation of Stranger Things scenes. It blew up and before long there were more than 300,000 TikTok vids using either the original or alternative iteration of the track. It also propelled the band into the US Billboard Hot 100 chart for the first time, subsequently becoming the band’s most listened-to song, currently sitting pretty with more than 210 million streams on Spotify.
According to the band’s own mythology, Mary On A Cross dates back to 1969, when an early version of Ghost dipped its fingers in the psychedelic waves of the dying decade. Despite being fronted by a swaggering, handsome clergyman known as Papa Nihil , this groovy 60s incarnation of Ghost failed to set the world on fire. It was only when Papa Nihil made his 21st Century reappearance with the band – declaring himself to be Papa Emeritus Zero – that Mary On A Cross and another song, Kiss The Go-Goat , were exhumed and re-released as the 2019 single Seven Inches Of Satanic Panic .
@editingtherapy ♬ Mary On A Cross - Ghost
Nonsense, of course, albeit entertaining nonsense. In reality, Seven Inches of Satanic Panic was written and recorded after the band’s 2018 album Prequelle . It was a collaboration with Swedish songwriting/production duo Salem Al Fakir and Vincent Pontare, aka Vargas & Lagola. The pair, who have previously worked with Madonna and Katy Perry, also co-wrote Prequelle tracks Dance Macabre and Life Eternal and would team up with Forge again on 2022’s Impera .
Released on September 13, 2019 as the B-side of the Seven Inches Of Satanic Panic single, Mary On A Cross plugged into the fake backstory Forge had created. Propelled by psychedelic garage rock organ it captured the late 60s occult vibes portrayed in the video for the single’s A-side, Kiss The Go-Goat .
The song’s lyrics are ambiguously evocative. “We were speeding together down the dark avenues,” sang Forge. “But besides all the stardom, all we got was blues.” Most striking lyrically is the chorus: “You go down like Holy Mary/Mary on a cross” , a seemingly provocative mash-up of Biblical and sexual imagery.
Forge himself has been loathe to strip away the mystery, though he admitted one his daughter’s friends had heard the song was “perverted”. Speaking to Mastodon ’s Brann Dailor on a recent livestream, the singer explained: “There are multiple layers in the lyrics that it might be important for people to understand. The chorus is written very tongue in cheek of course. ‘Go down’ doesn’t necessarily mean as in a 69 sense of the word… it can also mean go down as in go down in history, your own ascent.
“Mary doesn’t necessarily mean Mary, mother of Jesus,” he continued. “It might mean Mary Magdalene, the proclaimed whore who might have been the wife of Jesus – just as a symbol for someone who came off as one thing but actually had other intentions and did something else. Someone who’s miscredited.”
He went to reveal that the song was “more about friendship and how, together with someone else, you might have been something at one point and then you ended up just not being like that.”
Forge also archly pointed out that his stage name in pre-Ghost death metal band Repugnant was Mary Goore (actually a play on late guitar hero Gary Moore). “So it has very little to do with the mother of Jesus, because I don’t want anyone to believe that she was not a virgin,” he quipped.
Despite its status as a lowly b-side, Mary On A Cross instantly became a fixture in Ghost’s live set. But it was TikTok that amplified the song’s profile - something that Forge admits he never saw coming.
"I think it was my daughter who spotted it first," Forge told Metal Hammer . "She said, 'I heard Mary On A Cross on TikTok.' She's done that before with other songs. Then I was summoned to a label meeting and they were like, ‘Are you aware of what's going on?’, and they started presenting stats."
The song’s success brought with it some unwanted attention. Christian TikTok called out the song, with one user calling themselves stand_.with._jesus, declaring that, ‘This sound is horrible and is disrespectful to the beauty of Christianity’. Jesus.rescues went a step further, with a line-by-line breakdown of parts of the song. The poster suggested that the intention to weave sexual imagery with Christianity was more important than whether the song was literally about the Holy Mary, calling it a “perverted mockery of the Christian faith”.
Given that Forge had built Ghost on precisely that kind of anti-religious provocation, it’s likely that he knew exactly what response Mary On A Cross would prompt. Speaking on Cutter’s RockCast , the singer said the song’s viral success acted as a gateway for people who wanted to go deeper into the band’s world. “If you’re not revolted by [ Mary On A Cross ] and you want to cancel whoever wrote it,” he said. “Because that’s the backside of it, people hearing it and finding it deeply offensive and this and that because they didn’t have the brain capacity to realise what it’s about.”
Ultimately, the success of Mary On A Cross put Ghost in front of millions of unsuspecting souls who would probably never have heard them before. "We attracted so many new people who got sucked into this and fell into the rabbit hole of everything that we created,” he told Metal Hammer . “And that's a great thing because you always need more people.”
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Paul Travers has spent the best part of three decades writing about punk rock, heavy metal, and every associated sub-genre for the UK's biggest rock magazines, including Kerrang! and Metal Hammer .
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Skulls, Satan and Dave Grohl: Inside Mysterious Occult-Rock Band Ghost
By Richard Bienstock
Richard Bienstock
“You know, we thought we were going to be completely outed and everything was going to be over basically one week after the first record came out,” says one of the six anonymous members of Swedish occult-rock troupe Ghost . “We’re as baffled as anyone that it hasn’t happened yet. I have no idea how we’ve done it.”
In fact, it has been five years since the shrouded six-piece issued its debut, Opus Eponymous , an unholy amalgam of metal riffing (reference points: Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, Pentagram, Mercyful Fate), Satanic musings (first lyrics uttered on the first record: “Lucifer/We are here for your praise”) horror-church atmospherics and, perhaps most subversively, sticky-sweet hooks and melodies.
Since then, Ghost have hardly come to an end. Rather, the band has, among other things, signed with a major label (for a rumored, if never substantiated, hefty sum of money); issued a second, and considerably more trippy, record, Infestissumam (the release of which was reportedly delayed after several CD manufacturers refused to print the 16th-century orgy scene depicted in the deluxe version’s artwork) and performed on the main stage at Coachella. Along the way, the group has garnered accolades from high-profile fans like Metallica (who put them on the bill at their Orion Music + More festival), Phil Anselmo (who had a few Ghost members join Down onstage at the U.K.’s Download Festival), and Dave Grohl (who produced and played on their 2013 EP, If You Have Ghost ). Generally speaking, the band has done more to bring blasphemous, religion-skewering devil rock to the mainstream masses than perhaps any act since Marilyn Manson rose from the swamps of Florida to declare himself the Antichrist Superstar.
What’s more, Ghost has done it while somehow keeping its members’ identities under wraps (though, as with most things in this day and age, if you look hard enough online there are clues to be found). In the 1970s, Kiss at least provided us with (mostly fake) surnames to go along with their superhero alter egos; with Ghost, we are presented only with five cloaked and cowled Nameless Ghouls and their frontman, an “anti-pope” adorned in skeletal face paint, a papal mitre and plenty of inverted crosses while answering to the designation Papa Emeritus.
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“The reason for us doing this band the way we chose to do it was so that there would not be any focus on us as individuals,” explains Nameless Ghoul, speaking to Rolling Stone late one evening from his home in Linköping, Sweden. (For identification purposes, he helpfully offers up that he is the band’s lead guitarist). “But as we have grown, we understand that there is, anyway.”
Skulls, Satan and Dave Grohl: Inside Mysterious Occult-Rock Band Ghost , Page 1 of 3
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Grammy-winning metal band Ghost addresses 'satanic' accusations: 'There are other music styles that promote a way worse lifestyle'
The swedish shock-rock saviors' flamboyant frontman believes that “dark music, everything from gothic to death metal and black metal and hardcore” is a source of celebration and even salvation..
- Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again later. More content below
Over the past decade, bombastic, theatric, operatic metal Swedes have become unlikely mainstream rock stars. They won the Grammy for Best Metal Performance in 2016 and have scored three nominations since then, most recently for "Call Me Little Sunshine" off their 2022 studio LP, Impera. That ambitious 12-song cycle — despite being a seemingly willfully uncommercial concept album about "demigod worship" and "the unescapable fails and falls of empires" after the Black Plague, and boasting Aleister Crowley-inspired cover art — managed to yield the band's first Hot 100 single, “Mary on a Cross,” and debut at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. Impera also won two big fan-voted honors, Favorite Rock Album at the American Music Awards and Best Rock Album of the Year at the iHeart Radio Music Awards. And among Ghost's biggest fans is Def Leppard's Joe Elliott, who in a torch-passing moment contributed guest vocals to a new version of the Impera anthem " Spillways " earlier this year.
But not everyone’s a fan. “We obviously are a polarizing band,” Ghost’s fearless leader Tobias Forge — alternately known as the diabolical priest character Papa Emeritus or Papa’s panda-eyed successors, Cardinal Copia and now the Impera -era Papa Emeritus IV — tells Yahoo Entertainment.
Although Ghost’s over-the-top, presumably tongue-in-greasepainted-cheek satanic imagery has always drawn detractors, as their fame has grown, so have protests targeting the band — including a bizarre one that took place in Midland, Texas, and made international headlines, during Ghost’s “A Pale Tour Named Death” U.S. arena trek.
In November 2018, Larry Long, the pastor of the Fellowship Community Church, said Midland needed to be protected from the supposedly devil-worshiping group, warning a local CBS affiliate, “This kind of band will bring spiritual influences into this area. We’re concerned about it, because we believe the devil is real, just as we believe God is real. … I think if [young fans are] singing along to those lyrics, who knows what in the world they’re opening their hearts and lives up to?”
Ghost’s Midland show went on as planned — and of course, the church's stunt only raised Ghost's profile in the United States. “At the end of the day, what [the Fellowship Community Church] caused was more tickets sold. So, thank you very much,” Forge chuckles.
Still, although Forge says such outrage is “to an extent, amusing,” he adds, “To a greater extent, I think it’s sad . … I find it saddening thinking that there are people who don’t know f***ing bad from good and shit from Shinola. I find it saddening that people would choose to stand out in the cold [protesting Ghost], thinking that they’re making a difference. I think it’s sad that people are wasting their time thinking that we’re bad for people, when actually what we’re really trying to do is make people happy and make people feel good about themselves when they come to our show and have a good time.”
Although certain PMRC-baiting shock-rockers that paved the way for Ghost — Ozzy Osbourne, AC/DC, Judas Priest — have been accused of encouraging suicidal or homicidal tendencies among impressionable fans, Forge believes that “dark music, everything from gothic to death metal and black metal and hardcore” can, on the contrary, be a source of celebration and even salvation.
“There are definitely rock fans over the years that have done negative things toward each other and or towards themselves, but I don’t think that’s because of the music . That’s because they were in a bad place in their lives,” the good Papa stresses. “Actually, it might have even been the music that made them live so long, that kept them going. Hard rock, in general, does not promote that you should harm anyone. I definitely think there are other music styles that promote a way worse lifestyle, that you could look upon as being more negative. [Pop] music styles that promote a way of living that their fans will never have — when music is all about ‘making it’ and wearing ‘bling-bling’ and ‘all them bitches,’ and the idea that without that stuff you’re nothing — that is a bad influence for your fans. At least with most gothic or hard rock music, it’s about feeling good about yourself.”
Forge instead sees Ghost as following in tradition of “the big shock-rock bands of 1984” that his much older, punk-rocker brother introduced him to when he was growing up in a liberal, pop-culture-savvy home in Linköping, Sweden. “The artists I immediately grasped onto were when I was 3 years old,” Forge recalls. “[Mötley Crüe’s] Shout at the Devil , [Twisted Sister’s] Stay Hungry , KISS, stuff like that. My brother was so nice and just passed those records on to me, like, ‘Here, you’ll like this more.’ I played them all the time. Then it just blossomed from there.”
Now Ghost is being heralded as the imagination-sparking band serving the same purpose for today’s rock-starved youth. “I do believe that there is a glimmer of hope in what we do with regards to the fact that there are a lot of kids coming to our shows. We are the first band that they see live. That is a really good thing, thinking long-term,” Forge muses. “I don’t mind being that glimmer of hope. I do believe that the more exposure we get, the more time that we spend in people’s ears, I hope that the interest in analog rock will be kept alive or awoken or might find a way into kids of today. I guess we could be a little bit [for today’s young fans] what KISS was in the ’70s.”
That being said, Forge is reluctant to accept the pro-Ghost media’s proclamations that Ghost are the reigning saviors of rock ‘n’ roll. “I’d love for the mainstream music climate to steer back towards rock, and I’m sure it will at some point. But does that mean there will be image-driven shock-rock bands, as far as a movement? I don’t know,” he says. “I do believe that the rock bands that will be big in the future are the ones that are being formed by kids, the 18-year-olds, today, right now. They are the ones that will rock the future, because that’s how it always is. The bands that will be big in five or 10 years, when there might be a big domination of rock again, will be bands that we most likely don’t know as of right now.”
But those bands, as Forge hints, may very well be Ghost disciples, because today’s kids, despite the handwringing of concerned conservatives like Long, are loving Ghost’s epic live shows on their current "Re-Imperatour" — in which a Pope-robed Papa IV, flanked by Victorian-jacketed, steampunk-helmeted, and occasionally keytar-wielding Nameless Ghouls, performs dystopian anthems like "Imperium," "Rats," "From the Pinnacle to the Pit," "Year Zero," "Mummy Dust," and "Dance Macabre” in a rock ‘n’ roll church bedecked with inverted crosses.
As the tour climaxes next week with two shows at Los Angeles's Forum , the nearby Grammy Museum will even launch the Ghost Devotional Pop-Up for the band's especially faithful flock — complete with confession booth where fans are encouraged to "bare their souls about why they think Ghost are the best rock band in the world!" Ghost's imagery and themes may be alarming to some, but it seems the rock kids understand.
“The biggest misconception [about Ghost] is that the lyrical content is being provocative because it’s about God. And it’s not. It’s not about God at all,” insists Forge. “It’s about man , mankind. I use language and analogy to make it seem that it is about other things, but the songs are usually, they are about very real things. Sometimes I think it’s almost laughable to the point of annoying that protesters are just picking up on the literal meaning.
“There are many misconceptions about who I am or how I think, and of course it’s annoying. But that is just part of being in a band nowadays. If I didn’t want any of this, I shouldn’t be in a band. But I want to do this. I want to rock.”
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How Ghost — 'an occult, pop, satanic sort of rock 'n' roll band' — conquered metal and the charts
Onstage at Anaheim's Honda Center arena, Tobias Forge is not himself.
Instead, he is Papa Emeritus IV, leader of the theatrical Swedish metal band Ghost, singing from behind a latex mask and corpse paint, dressed in religious attire or bat wings.
His persona is of Ghost’s demonic pope, preaching of war and plague like a doom prophet amid heavy guitar riffs and vivid pop melodies. Some lyrics are more prescient than fantasy, from warning of “beliefs contagious, spreading disease” on the 2018 song “Rats” to the band’s new “Impera” album, which decries empire-building in time for Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.
Forge says he’s merely an observer of history and “the circularity of things,” as destructive human impulses repeat themselves catastrophically across the centuries. “Flags, pandemics, flus and dictators come and go,” he says cheerfully. “Empires come and go. It’s always in circles, because at the end of the day we are dealing with humans.”
Forge, 41, is out of costume and sipping coffee at his West Hollywood hotel after a night of hard rock spectacle, with pyro eruptions and a big stage meant to convey threatening Gothic arches and stained glass. Offstage, Forge is less explosive, dressed in a treasured 1988 Candlemass tour T-shirt, his light auburn hair short and swept upward on top. He’s a thoughtful interview and quick with a joke, a family man with a wife and fraternal twins back in Stockholm. The previous night’s concert in Orange County was the final stop of a co-headlining arena tour with the Danish band Volbeat designed as a prelude to the March 11 release of the band's fifth album, “Impera.”
During rehearsals ahead of the tour, Forge got “a very mild case” of the Omicron virus. Then the eight other touring members of the band tested positive, along with four crew members. “The whole band had it at the same time, so we just had COVID rehearsals,” he says. The tour happened as scheduled, and Ghost will be back in the U.S. later this year.
The band’s last record, 2018’s “Prequelle,” earned a Grammy nomination for rock album and hit No. 3 on Billboard’s Top 200. The band counts Metallica and Dave Grohl among its high-profile fans, and attracts a multigenerational rock audience, from kids in baby pope gear all the way up to older fanatics nostalgic for ’70s shock rock.
“Ghost has a diverse audience, which I love to see, especially for metal,” says Sammi Chichester, managing editor of Revolver Magazine, a close observer of the metal scene.
Forge is able to find pop hooks even as he mines his own low expectations for mankind. As a result of that catchiness, Ghost has been controversial among certain extreme-metal tastemakers. “It is a routine topic — metalheads love to argue,” says Chichester with a laugh.
The music tends to be more engaging than depressed, despite the ominous religious imagery.
“The lyrics are not about God. They’re about man,” says Forge. “We are, at the end of the day, an occult, pop, satanic sort of rock ’n' roll band meant to entertain a group of people who are already down with that stuff.”
Any discussion with Forge quickly reveals him as a pop music obsessive, as he casually references Leonard Cohen, the Bangles and the primitive weirdness of the Shaggs. He’s not your typical high priest of metal. “In my adolescence, I was completely a death metal/black metal person in action and message,” he says. “But I always listened to a lot of other things. And that materialized in whatever music I was writing.”
Ghost was created in 2006 with Forge’s recording of a track called “Stand by Him,” built on a slippery metal riff and roots firmly planted in Scandinavian black metal. The music that followed rarely strayed from a growling metal core but showed surprising flourishes from the beginning, from busy keyboard melodies to delicate acoustic guitar.
The band arrived with a fully formed image that adopted a demonic, bizarro take on the Catholic tradition, accented with Gothic flair and comedy. Forge stood at the microphone in the role of a series of demonic popes called Papa Emeritus (Nos. I-IV), in flamboyant papal attire, with a band of musicians called Nameless Ghouls in silver masks. (The Ghouls now appear in what look like gas masks from a dystopian future.)
Forge, who is the band’s only consistent member, kept his identity hidden behind facepaint and pseudonym until he had to reveal his real name during an unsuccessful 2017 lawsuit by four ex-members of Ghost over back pay.
"Impera" was recorded last spring and summer, after the original plan to work with an American producer in the U.S. was canceled as the coronavirus crisis dragged on. Instead, Forge reunited with Swedish producer Klas Åhlund (Ghost’s collaborator on 2015's “Meliora”), and he took his time composing new songs.
He sketched out a melody for the album’s closer, a nearly seven-minute prog epic called “ Respite on the Spitalfields ,” on the small electric piano in his daughter's bedroom. “ Twenties ” emerged as a frantic chronicle of greed and oppression, in the form of a “demagogue sect leader speaking down to his followers in utter contempt,” he says. The sneering, catchy ’80s rock of “ Griftwood ” was inspired by former Vice President Mike Pence and leaders who wield the Bible as a means to political power.
The album also arrives as a pair of successful TV series — “ Cobra Kai ” and “Peacemaker” — have reintroduced an earlier generation of pop-metal to the masses, with prominent use of ’80s hits by the likes of Twisted Sister, Faster Pussycat, Hanoi Rocks, Ratt, Mötley Crüe, Scorpions and Def Leppard.
Ghost isn’t a throwback to the hair-metal era but does share a taste for hooks and melodrama. Forge hasn’t seen “Peacemaker” but spent quality downtime at home in Sweden watching “Cobra Kai” with his teenage daughter. “That series is a slam-dunk,” he says of the show, which continues the story of the “Karate Kid” movies. “And the music is great."
The Ghost mastermind admits to nostalgia for what was commonly known as “album-oriented rock,” the mainstream rock category epitomized by Journey, Foreigner, Boston and other ’70s and ’80s FM radio stars. “I'm a huge fan of AOR bands,” says Forge, describing the genre as “smart divorce rock played by older men with mustaches who have gone through a little bit in their lives.”
Forge was raised in Linköping, Sweden, by a single mother and indoctrinated into rock early, by a brother 13 years older. Before he was 10, Forge was buying English and German rock magazines he couldn’t read, and absorbing as much metal, punk and classic rock as he could.
As a teenager, his tastes grew even darker and more extreme, as he discovered underground metal rising from Europe and America — then turned away from anything new in the genre after 1994, when he sensed things becoming too polished, spoiling the scary lo-fi sound and image he loved.
As Ghost itself grows more sophisticated in its sound and approach, Forge knows some longtime fans wish he would return to the band’s original recipe. Forge understands the feeling, and admits that he’d love nothing more than to produce new albums from bands of his youth so that he could force them back to an earlier sound.
He says he wants to satisfy fans while also challenging them. "I deal with that professionally in one way, and as a fan in another.”
Forge fully appreciates the intense feelings a music fan can have about a recording artist. Evolution is not always welcome.
“That has a lot to do with the type of personalities that are drawn to the world that we’ve been talking about: metal, hardcore, comic books, sci-fi — it’s a retreat, a safe place of order, organization, knowledge. This is the world that you hide in after school. And now there’s someone coming in there trying to … evolve? It’s disruptive.
“It’s not right or wrong. The future is what we don't know, as much as it hurts.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times .
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Ghost: Members, albums, songs and tour dates
We can’t forget the value that Sweden has brought to pop and rock music. ABBA, Roxette, Ace of Base, Opeth, and many other pop and rock bands came out of Sweden. One of the most important of these bands is Ghost. We have gathered all the information you need to know about the Swedish rock band Ghost .
Table of Contents
Among the Swedish rock bands that have garnered international attention, Ghost (also known as Ghost B.C. in the US) stands out as a true revelation in the realm of heavy metal and hard rock. Formed in Linköping in 2006, Ghost combines a unique blend of influences, including classic metal, arena rock, pop rock, rock, doom metal, and a touch of the macabre.
The Swedish band Ghost is known for its theatrical and enigmatic image. The band members are known as “ Nameless Ghouls ” and wear costumes and masks that conceal their identities.
How was the band Ghost formed?
The group members had known each other for a long time. One day Tobias Forge decided to form a group. This idea was welcomed by all Ghost members.
In 2006, they formed the band Ghost in Linköping, Sweden. At that time the members were still playing in other bands. The official formation took place only in 2008.
In an interview with Rolling Stone Deutschland , Tobias Forge (Cardinal Copia) talks about the creation of Ghost as follows:
“I’ve been playing death and black metal ever since the early ’90s, so it wasn’t like, “Oh, I’m gonna come up with a completely different thing, like the devil.” I’ve been delving into devilish themes ever since my first band, which was a death metal band. So, the idea wasn’t very original; it just felt natural. Around 2006, 2007, and 2008, I had stepped away from the extreme metal scene. I wasn’t playing in a metal band anymore. Instead, I was playing bass in one band that was definitely not metal, and I had my own band that ventured into some sort of pop-rock territory. When Ghost emerged in my mind and the songs started to take shape, it just fit perfectly. It felt intuitive and natural, like this is where my pop sensibilities could merge with my metal background. It allowed me to express myself in a way that’s, well, I guess the word for it would be Gothic.
In addition to their other jobs, the band members continued to work on Ghost. In 2008, they left the other bands and started to concentrate on Ghost and the seeds started to bear their first fruits. Ghost released its first songs as a 3-track demo on MySpace in 2010.
Ghost members
The founding ghost members:.
The band Ghost consists of six members, Cardinal Copia , formerly known as Papa Emeritus and five so-called Nameless Ghouls .
Each Nameless Ghoul embodies one of the elements earth, fire, water, wind, and the Aether (Omega) which is also represented by the corresponding element signs.
Ghost’s symbols:
Some of the Ghost members’ names and faces were revealed in 2017. Here are the Ghost members unmasked:
Tobias Forge (Papa Emeritus and Cardinal Copia)
Tobias Forge, one of the founding members of Ghost, was born on March 3, 1991, in Linköping, Sweden.
He spent his childhood in the same house with his mother and older brother. It was not a very wealthy family. The family had different values than money. The family valued art, music, philosophy, and culture more than money. When people visited Tobias’ house and saw the paintings on the walls and the library, they thought it looked like a museum.
When Tobias became a teenager, he realized that he was uncomfortable with his Christian teacher’s authoritarian religious indoctrination. This behavior began to turn Tobias off religion. Then, influenced by the behavior of his step-mother, who lived in a different house with his father and behaved in the same way as his teacher, Tobias became increasingly distant from the Christian religion.
Tobias Forge started to make death metal when he was 13 years old . He started playing instruments and writing his own songs. Before forming Ghost, He was involved in several bands. One of the notable bands he was a part of was “ Repugnant ,” a Swedish death metal band formed in 1998.
Forge performed under the stage name “ Mary Goore ” during his time with Repugnant. While Repugnant did not achieve the same level of success as Ghost, it was an important stepping stone in Tobias Forge’s musical career.
Until 2006 Tobias had gained experience with many bands and in 2006 he decided to form Ghost.
Tobias Forge is the person behind the characters Papa Emeritus I (2010-2012), Papa Emeritus II (2012-2015), Papa Emeritus III (2015-2017), Papa Emeritus IV (2020-present) and Papa Emeritus Cardinal Copia – (2018-2020).
Papa Nihil (2018–2020)
Papa Nihil , also known as the “ Saxophone Ghoul ,” made his first notable appearance during Ghost’s “Popestar” tour in 2016. He is portrayed as an elderly, decrepit figure, often seen with a skull-faced mask and adorned in papal vestments. What sets him apart from the other Nameless Ghouls in the band is his unusual instrument of choice – the saxophone.
One of the most intriguing aspects of Papa Nihil is the ongoing speculation about his identity. While Ghost’s mastermind, Tobias Forge, has portrayed Papa Emeritus and other characters, he’s never confirmed whether he is also the man behind Papa Nihil. Some fans speculate that the character might represent a past Papa Emeritus, while others believe Papa Nihil could be a separate entity entirely. The ambiguity surrounding Papa Nihil’s identity adds a layer of mystique to Ghost’s elaborate mythos.
Papa Nihil’s real name is unknown.
Nameless Ghouls – Unmasked
Ghost members’ names and faces were revealed in 2017:
In April 2017, some names were made public on the Internet by former band member Simon Söderberg . Here are the names and faces of the Nameless Ghouls:
Simon Söderberg ( Alpha )
Per eriksson (fire).
- Martin Persner (Omega, 2010-2016)
Per Eriksson , also known as “ Sodomizer ,” is one of the Nameless Ghouls. He was born on April 2, 1981 in Falun, Sweden.
He joined Ghost as a live guitarist in 2015 and became a Nameless Ghoul. Before he joined Ghost, he was a member of the bands Bloodbath and Katatonia
In 2017, the shroud of anonymity began to lift as some of the Nameless Ghouls, including Simon Söderberg, revealed their identities. Alpha’s unmasking allowed fans to put a face to the music they had grown to love.
Unfortunately, the unveiling of Alpha’s identity coincided with a legal dispute between Simon Söderberg and the band’s frontman, Tobias Forge, who portrays the various incarnations of Papa Emeritus. Söderberg and other former Nameless Ghouls sued Forge over issues related to royalties and band ownership.
Due to the lack of evidence, the Linköping court has now dismissed the case. As a direct consequence, Forge’s former bandmates have to pay the legal costs of their ex-boss in the amount of 1.3 million Swedish kronor . The amount corresponds to about 127000 euros .
Martin Persner (Omega)
Martin Persner , known by his stage name “ Omega ,” was one of the original members of the Swedish heavy metal band Ghost. He played guitar in the band and was an integral part of Ghost’s early years. Omega joined Ghost when the band was first formed in 2008.
Martin Persner left Ghost in 2016 . His departure marked a significant change in the band’s lineup.
Martin Persner’s decision to leave Ghost was influenced by several factors, including creative differences and the desire to pursue other musical projects. After leaving Ghost, he went on to form a new band called “ Magna Carta Cartel ” and continued his musical career outside of the Ghost persona.
In an interview, Martin Persner talked about his decision and said:
“Hi. My name is Martin, and I’ve been a part of the rock band Ghost for 7 years. Some of you people know me as Omega, or Quintessence, or A Nameless Ghoul…. Since of July last year, 2016 that is, I am no longer part of Ghost, as some of you have noticed. Reasons why… we’ll take at another date.”
All Ghost members
In May 2022, during the Imperator through Europe, tour photographer Ryan Chang posted a crew photo online showing all crew and tour members – in addition to the entire unmasked Ghost band, also the support bands Twin Temple and Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats. Accordingly, the Nameless Ghouls consist of the following musicians :
- Cos Sylvan (Rain)
- Hayden Scott (Mountain)
- Jutty Taylor (Swiss/Multi)
- Laura Scarborough (Cirrus/ Tall)
- Mad Gallica (Cumulus / Curvy)
- Sophie Amelkin (Sunshine)
Ghost’s Discography
Ghost released 5 albums o far. Here are the albums by Ghost:
Opus Eponymous – 2010: A Dark Ritual Begins
In 2009, a demo recording featuring three self-produced songs and a 7-inch vinyl single titled “Elizabeth” and “Death Knell” was released through the German record label Iron Pegasus Records. Subsequently, on October 18, 2010, the debut album “Opus Eponymous” was released in Europe.
Ghost’s debut album, “Opus Eponymous,” burst onto the scene in 2010, shrouded in anonymity. The record, often referred to as their “ Black Mass ,” set the stage for what would become Ghost’s signature blend of ominous lyrics and catchy melodies. Songs like “ Ritual ” and “ Elizabeth ” introduced us to the unholy liturgy of Papa Emeritus and the Nameless Ghouls.
The album comprises nine songs, including two instrumental pieces, among them the four previously released tracks, which appeared in a reworked form.
In North America, the album was released on January 18, 2011, through Metal Blade Records , while in Japan, it came out on April 6 through Trooper Entertainment, featuring a cover version of The Beatles’ song “Here Comes the Sun” as a bonus track.
Prior to the album’s release, the band garnered attention for their complete anonymity and their decision to abstain from interviews or photoshoots.
Infestissumam – 2013: The Rise of the Antichrist
In 2013, Ghost unleashed “ Infestissumam ,” a grandiose follow-up that elevated their theatricality to new heights. This album delved deeper into themes of the occult and featured tracks like “ Year Zero ” and “ Secular Haze ,” showcasing Ghost’s ability to craft both sinister anthems and eerie ballads.
Musically speaking, “Infestissumam” is an impressive continuation of Ghost’s characteristic sound. The songs on this album are simultaneously catchy and dark. Tracks like “Year Zero” and “Secular Haze” perfectly capture the band’s mysterious atmosphere. Ghost masterfully combines captivating melodies with devilishly dark lyrics, giving the album a unique allure.
A significant part of Ghost’s appeal lies in their ability to approach the occult and the Satanic in a provocative yet intelligent manner. The lyrics of “Infestissumam” are filled with allusions to religion, sin, and the darker aspects of life. This has led the band to admiration and controversy, further solidifying their position as one of the most polarizing bands in the modern music scene.
“Infestissumam” is undoubtedly a milestone in Ghost’s career.
Meliora – 2015: The Birth of Papa Emeritus III
“ Meliora ” is Ghost’s third studio album and was released in 2015. The title “Meliora” is Latin for “better” or “improved,” signifying a pursuit of enhancement. In many ways, the album represents an artistic and musical improvement compared to the band’s previous works.
From a musical perspective, “Meliora” is a sensory delight. The songs on this album are masterfully arranged, featuring a blend of dark and catchy melodies. Tracks like “ Cirice ” and “ From the Pinnacle to the Pit ” are examples of Ghost’s ability to create earworms that simultaneously embed themselves in your memory and create a dark atmosphere.
Lyrically, “Meliora” delves deep into the occult and satanic themes that define Ghost. The lyrics skillfully play with religious symbols and metaphysical ideas, often infused with ironic yet dark poetry. This contributes to the mysterious and provocative nature of Ghost.
“Meliora” marked a pivotal moment in Ghost’s career. With the introduction of Papa Emeritus III, the band delivered an opus that garnered widespread acclaim. This album spawned the Grammy Award-winning hit “Cirice , “ as well as other gems like “ He Is ” and “ From the Pinnacle to the Pit .”
Prequelle – 2018 : The Plague and the Persona
“ Prequelle ” is a celebration for metal enthusiasts. The songs are skillfully arranged with powerful riffs, melodic hooks, and epic refrains. Tracks like “Rats” and “Dance Macabre” are catchy yet dark, showing the theatrical essence of Ghost perfectly.
Lyrically, “Prequelle” delves deep into themes of death, plague, and apocalypse. The lyrics are often metaphorical and symbolic, raising questions about the fate of humanity. This adds a certain depth and complexity to the album.
Ghost’s fourth studio album, “Prequelle,” offered a fresh narrative twist, centered around themes of the bubonic plague and the persona of Papa Nihil . Tracks like “ Rats ” and “ Dance Macabre ” showcased Ghost’s knack for crafting infectious hooks while maintaining their dark and enigmatic aura.
Impera – 2022: The Enigma Continues
Ghost’s fifth studio album, “Impera,” was released in 2022.
According to Tobias Forge, “ Impera ” delves into the rise and fall of great empires and the perpetual cycle of these historical processes. However, as the album progresses, it doesn’t always remain as specific as in the track “ Kaisarion ,” which alludes to Cleopatra’s offspring.
The subsequent track, “ Spillways ,” addresses the manifold seductions of sweet power in a somewhat more general language. Above all, it provides the necessary moments of release, something that Ghost has not denied itself since “ Meliora .” It’s noteworthy how, during the days of “Opus Eponymous,” occasional catchy melodies emerged from the doom-heavy mix – and today, it’s essentially the opposite.
The best songs of Ghost
Let us explore the best songs by Ghost and highlight their remarkable achievements.
Here are the best songs of Ghost:
“Square Hammer”
“Square Hammer” is a true masterpiece and one of Ghost’s biggest hits . The song was released in 2016. It reached the top of the Billboard Mainstream Rock Songs chart, catapulting Ghost into the mainstream rock scene.
“Cirice” is another song that underscores Ghost’s success. It won the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 2016 and became an anthem for fans around the world.
“Rats” is a dynamic song from their album “Prequelle.” It received high praise from critics and gained significant popularity.
“He Is” is a more subdued song by Ghost, creating an emotive atmosphere. This track demonstrates the band’s melodic depth and has been regarded by many as one of their most moving songs.
“Year Zero”
“Year Zero” is a prime example of Ghost’s fascination with occult and satanic themes . The song pays homage to the dark and mysterious and has been considered one of their most significant tracks.
All of these songs were performed live by Ghost. There are also songs that Ghost has never played live .
Ghost’s Achievements
Over the years, Ghost has achieved an impressive array of successes. In addition to the Grammy awards mentioned earlier, they have secured numerous chart placements, including top 10 positions on the Billboard 200 chart. They have also built a dedicated following and are renowned for their breathtaking live performances.
What is your favorite album and song ny Ghost? Let us know in the comments!
Hi everyone, I'm Rob Miller – an editor and writer deeply immersed in the world of rock and metal. I grew up in a city pulsating with energy, and my love for the raw power of music led me into journalism. Join our community with your comments.
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Ghost review – rock’n’roll pyro pantomime is hellishly good fun
AO Arena, Manchester Tobias Forge’s band of ghouls just reached No 2 in the UK charts, and their symphonic metal – complete with bat wings, confetti and flamethrowers – has universal appeal
I t’s some feat bringing corpse paint to the mainstream, but Ghost have done it: the Swedes arrive for the opening night of their first UK tour in three years having seen their new album Impera reach No 2 in the charts last month.
The band’s identities were once totally secret, and although the rest remain anonymous – referred to as Nameless Ghouls, and wearing headgear that’s part steampunk, part Tom Hardy’s Bane – Ghost are a less mysterious proposition now that the theatrical Tobias Forge is known as their frontman. Not that this has had any impact on their symphonic, pop-savvy metal. What started as a doomy occult band has morphed into a blockbusting arena act, like a spooky Def Leppard without the flowing locks.
We’re two songs in and the prescient Rats already has a packed arena in raptures. Released pre-pandemic, Forge sings: “In times of turmoil, in times like these / Beliefs contagious, spreading disease.” Remove the driving guitar chugs from Spillways and in another lifetime it could be an Abba staple, such is its outrageously catchy chorus – that plinking piano opening surely a tribute to Mamma Mia from their fellow Swedes.
“Do you like a lot of oomph?” Forge enquires, before the band launch into Mummy Dust. Its zany keytar solo isn’t fooling anyone: with hulking, Metallica-esque riffs, this is Ghost’s heaviest song. On the moody Cirice, Forge slinks across the stage wearing bat wings, before funereal stomper Square Hammer inspires the most frenzied singalong of the night.
There are confetti cannon, costume changes, flamethrowers and other forms of pyro, but the band is self-aware, preventing proceedings from ever getting too cartoonish. As one of the three guitarists relishes a solo spot on From the Pinnacle to the Pit a little much for his liking, Forge playfully reprimands them with a wagging finger; this is pantomime as much as rock’n’roll.
Ghost have often delved into history for thematic fare – 2018’s Prequelle drew on the Black Death, Impera from Victorian empires – but they’ve always seemed one step ahead during their sensational, transatlantic rise. Forge has said that he’s already decided the title of Ghost’s next album; one only hopes that he’s not forgetting to take all of this in, because his band have something magnificent to offer in the present.
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The Meaning Behind “Sister Christian” by Night Ranger and the Classic Movie that Brought It to a New Audience
P ower ballads, in one form or another, have been a part of rock and roll almost since the genre began. But there’s no doubting the format hit a new high in the ’80s. And you’d be hard-pressed to find a better example of this mini-genre than the stirring “Sister Christian” by Night Ranger.
What is “Sister Christian” about? How did the band come up with its restrained-to-rocking arrangement? And what classic movie brought the song to a new audience via an unforgettable needle drop? Let’s go motoring back to the ’80s to find out all the answers.
Slowing It Down a Bit
Night Ranger came barreling out of San Francisco with their 1982 debut album Dawn Patro l, which trafficked in hard rock, albeit with enough hooks and harmonies to make it palatable to a pop audience. The single “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me” just scraped into the Top 40, setting the stage for their 1983 sophomore record Midnight Madness .
“Sister Christian,” which the band included on Midnight Madnes s, was a song they had been playing in clubs for a while before they even started their recording career. Drummer Kelly Keagy wrote the song on acoustic guitar. When he did, he was already strumming a kind of instrumental buildup into the chorus, which would anticipate the way the song would sound when Night Ranger recorded it.
The idea of a hard-rocking band coming out with a sensitive ballad didn’t scare off Night Ranger, in part because of the subject matter. Instead of it being a love song (or love-gone-wrong song, for that matter), “Sister Christian” focused on a big brother’s concern for his younger sister as she navigated the pitfalls of her burgeoning maturity. Keagy explained as much to this author for the book Playing Back the ’80s: A Decade of Unstoppable Hits :
“I think that’s the reason why we liked it. It wasn’t lovey-dovey. It had some sort of edge to it. And it had a connection with people about growing up or moving ahead in life. That’s what I wanted it to be.”
By the way, the title that has confused listeners into thinking the song had some sort of religious subtext was an accident. When Night Ranger bassist Jack Blades heard Keagy singing the song for the first time, he thought he heard Christian , not Christy , which was Keagy’s sister’s actual name. Christian stuck.
Born to Boogie
With Keagy delivering a heartfelt lead vocal, and the way the somber piano of Alan Fitzgerald opens up into the thrilling guitars, “Sister Christian” was a no-brainer hit when released as a single in 1984, making it to No. 5 on the pop charts. If you missed it the first time, you might have caught it during a wild scene in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights in 1997, when it played during a drug deal-gone bad as part of the dealer’s mixtape.
“We were laughing in the theater,” Keagy said about when the band members first saw the movie. “Jack and I were sitting next to each other. And we were saying, ‘Yeah, remember that guy in North Hollywood? This could have been filmed in his house.’ We totally connected with that scene. Other than the firecrackers, it all happened to us. I mean somebody could have been following us around.”
The Meaning of “Sister Christian”
“Sister Christian” acknowledges both the narrator’s willingness to protect his little sister and his realization there’s only so much he can do. You know those boys don’t want to play no more with you , he warns, suggesting that their intentions have changed. It’s touching to hear him deliver his advice: Sister Christian, there’s so much in life / Don’t you give it up before your time is du e.
The refrain is one of the most misheard and misunderstood in all of rock. Keagy is singing You’re motoring , not You’re Motor-Ann , or some other derivation. The lyric serves two purposes. It refers to Christian going out at night in cars with her young suitors. And it also describes the way that she’s moving through life at a pace which makes her big brother uncomfortable.
“Sister Christian” arrived at a time before it was expected that every hard rock band should have a ballad lying in wait to follow up the heavy stuff. As such, it set the tone for the many, many power ballads to come in the second half of the decade. But good luck finding any one of those later songs that pack the same emotional punch as the Night Ranger classic that influenced them in the first place.
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Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images for NAMM
The post The Meaning Behind “Sister Christian” by Night Ranger and the Classic Movie that Brought It to a New Audience appeared first on American Songwriter .
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The idea of a hard-rocking band coming out with a sensitive ballad didn't scare off Night Ranger, in part because of the subject matter. Instead of it being a love song (or love-gone-wrong song ...