By Leah Bernstein
Art by Leah Bernstein
On October 28th, the bathrooms of the Cannoneer Court were bathed in their typical lukewarm light as I found myself barred in one of the stalls—already a bit late for my first class of the day, my focus was not on anything too graphic for Prattler publication standards, but instead an impending announcement. The band Ghost had been teasing something for the past few days, and lo and behold: an announcement for the 2025 [REDACTED] Tour across Europe, the US, and Mexico with fifty total stops. Tickets went up less than a week later and quickly sold out at several locations—one of them being none other than Madison Square Garden in our very own New York.
The feat is an impressive milestone for any artist to be sure. But casting a cursory look at the Swedish rock-metal band, it’s surprising that they’d seem to have such mainstream appeal. Sure, their song “Mary on a Cross” from their sixties-styled Seven Inches of Satanic Panic EP blew up on TikTok in 2022, even going certified platinum about a year later. But a single song (that isn’t even really part of the band’s main catalog, mind you) can’t really be indicative of an artist’s whole repertoire, nor could it net them opportunities like a sold-out show at Madison Square or opening for legends like Iron Maiden and Metallica. No, Ghost has to have some kernel of appeal beyond one song’s catchy chorus, some reason for fans like myself and many others to have enjoyed their work since their debut in 2010.
Perhaps the most eye-catching reason is the fact Ghost commits to a character, with said character being the face of a made-up satanic clergy. Their mission? To spread the wicked word of the big man downstairs through song, and they more than live up to the image they’ve cultivated for themselves. Their frontman and creative mastermind, Tobias Forge, takes on the role of the anti-pope Papa Emeritus leading the congregation, each album cycle introducing a new “person” to take on the mantle. The personalities of the Emerituses (Emeriti?) ranged from mysterious, to imposing, to sensual, to charismatic, but despite the little touches that set them apart they’re all united in the consistent uses of skeletal face makeup and gothic, elaborate papal robes. Forge even wears masks to sell the characters— though it was initially a move to keep his identity under wraps (something that worked until a 2017 lawsuit). Later iterations, such as Papa III and Papa IV (who originated as middle-manager Cardinal Copia), even shook up their styles by changing into various costumes for performances, each one adorned with the band’s logo: an upside-down crucifix interwoven with a “G”.
No matter the Emeritus, he’s accompanied by his band dubbed the “Nameless Ghouls”. While they are an assortment of hired performers (that also remain anonymous while working with the band) more than collaborative equals, making Ghost more of a project in the vein of Bathory or Nine Inch Nails with Forge putting everything together, they are no less essential to the group’s image. They wear costumes that have included pieces such as gothic monk robes, Venetian Bauta masks, chrome devil masks, suits with stylized bone flourishing, and helmets that feel one part subnautica equipment and one part fetish gear. The stages they play on complete the atmosphere, decorated with checkered floors, multiple platforms for the band to play on and Papa to prance about, and projections of stained glass mosaics depicting devilish imagery.
The theatrics are ornate and detailed, and obviously? Things didn’t start out this way. Ghost’s origins go back to Sweden in 2006, when call-center employee Tobias Forge decided to begin developing the band himself after stints in the short-lived groups Repugnant, Crashdïet, Subvision, and Magna Carta Cartel. The groups made music in the death metal, glam metal, pop rock, and alt rock genres respectively, priming Forge for interest in these different approaches to music and eventually inspiring his approach to Ghost. He wanted to pursue a project inspired by horror films, the presentation of traditional Scandinavian metal, his love of theatrics, and his own upbringing around Christianity. He viewed churches as unsettling (though interesting) museums more than sacred ground because of his biological mother, and had an unfavorable view of the religion’s teachings, due to his strained relationship with a cruel zealot of a stepmother. He felt alienated at her home and had her religious teachings forced upon him, even joking in an interview that her behavior pushed him to run “headfirst into the arms of the Devil" as an adolescent. After asking his wife, Boel, for permission to focus on his creative pursuits, Tobias went full-steam ahead on development for the band’s debut album.
Four years later, in 2010, Opus Eponymous would see daylight. Pulling in its first audience, with an occult sound wildly different from their current day arena-friendly hits, it began the long-running saga of the Antichrist’s life that has stretched across all of Ghost’s studio albums. Opus details how it came to be conceived, opening with a Night on Bald Mountain-esque ritual in which the souls of the damned are summoned to bear witness. Some, such as the Blood Countess Elizabeth Bathory and women executed as so-called witches, are even promised new life as dark martyrs if they pledge themselves to the ceremony. Here one of the cruxes of Ghost’s aesthetic is established: riffing on traditions of the Catholic Church, often by inverting traditional prayers, chants, and ceremonies.
It has to be the group’s heaviest album musically, but that alone isn’t saying much. Opus has tracks reminiscent of bands like Kansas and Blue Öyster Cult’s style with an eerier aura permeating its sound. It’s an album characterized by ritualesque tracks all melding into one another, as if part of the congregation’s unholy sermons being preached. While the album on its own is a bit underwhelming, it came alive in the band’s early live performances. Small stages, dim red lighting, Papa Emeritus I swinging a smoking thurible, and the inclusion of chants not found on the album to transition between tracks sold the dark congregation element of early Ghost. It’s hazy, raw, explicitly blasphemous, and creeps along at a great pace even if some tracks are repetitive. That is, until the labor of the Antichrist begins in the instrumental track “Genesis”, a song meant to convey the chaotic pains of birth until it peters out into a sickly sweet guitar solo— the spawn of the Devil has arrived and it will get but a single moment to be a proper child before it is thrust onto the path of fate.
While likely not intentional, the quiet close of “Genesis” perfectly leads into the starting track of Ghost's next album Infestissumam, which is also titled “Infestissumam”. Opus Eponymous was incredibly successful for a metal band in 2010 trying to promote itself through MySpace, which gave following works more room to branch out. While “Infestissumam”’s triumphant choral chant about celebrating the arrival of the Antichrist to the masses seems like an indication the band is about to do Opus Eponymous all over again, that’s far from the truth. Infestissumam is an album of pure revelry. With the Antichrist’s birth, Satan and his congregation have effectively won, immediately leading to their takeover and mankind buckling under almost instantly. All sorts of hedonism is encouraged, such as the duology of “Body and Blood” and the punny “Idolatrine” encouraging the masses to eat the remains of and then shit on the idea of God, and “Monstrance Clock” being about everyone “coming together” in what’s clearly an orgy.
To match the party atmosphere of Infestissumam is a shakeup in musical style. The album has wildly different signatures for each song, each one more complex with dynamic instrumentation, steering hard and away from Opus’ repetitive nature. Its energy, conveyed strongly through Forge’s performances live and in the studio, is smugly prideful. It’s a funny sort of performance when contrasted with the Papa Emeritus II figure leading the band, who was portrayed as a bitter and terrifying old man in promotion during this time. “Secular Haze” is a rocking carnival-like track meant to simulate the sensation of drowning, with great use of an organ right out of a cabaret, and “Per Aspera Ad Inferior” (loosely translating to “through hardships to Hell”) is a victorious march full of engaging riffs. There is one song that stands out from the rest of Infestissumam’s debauchery, though: its sixth track, “Year Zero”. It’s a chilling anthem that catches the listener’s attention with the loud chanting of many beasts of disaster and never lets go with its dramatic swells, a brief interlude in the celebrations of the album to announce what exactly the Devil and his spawn think of humanity. While the party resumes, it plants an unsettling seed in the mind of the listener of the despair yet to come.
Cue Meliora. Ghost’s third album, it’s a bit more thematically ambitious than its predecessors, marking a turning point in the band’s presentation. Meliora’s main inspiration pulls from the gothic elements of the Belle Epoque, Industrial Age, and silent films like Metropolis. It takes place in a sprawling super-urban dystopia dominated by the influence of sin, as everything builds to eventual doomsday. The Antichrist has grown up in this world and this time it assumes full control of the narrative as it tries to subtly sway the masses away from the influence of all organized religion— including the congregation that spawned it. This effort succeeds and eventually leaves mankind alone with no larger power to protect them, as their immediate decline looms large on the horizon.
“Approachable yet ominous” became a sort of mantra during Meliora’s time that would define Ghost going forward, assisted with the behavior of new character Papa Emeritus III. He was more active on stage than the others and had a more flirtatious, hip persona that quickly endeared him to the audience. Meliora became a perfect synthesis of the darker blasphemy of Opus Eponymous and Infestissumam while introducing the glammed up polish of albums yet to come, its sound partly due to Forge bringing in a producer more experienced with pop and rock than metal, also wanting to lean heavy on guitars. This added to the heavy, industrial chug the album had in tracks like “From the Pinnacle to the Pit” and “Mummy Dust”, their lyrics uttered with literal growls of contempt—though they were also used to add a foreboding energy to the gothic standout “Cirice”. Meliora also marks a return to utilizing chants as a feature of multiple tracks, like the wails at the end of “Deus in Absentia” and Meliora’s unofficial epilogue “Zenith”, something that only existed in a limited physical release and on Swedish Spotify until 2023. This bonus track wrapped the album up with an eerie, prominent piano and a return to Ghost’s usage of chants, addressing how humankind have reached their titular zenith and that they’re now on their own.
This fall is accelerated by the tragedy of Ghost’s fourth album Prequelle. It opens with a rendition of nursery rhyme "Ring Around the Rosie" in “Ashes”, sung by Forge’s daughter Minou, preparing listeners for an album based on one of the darkest periods in human history. It’s common knowledge that the children's song was based on the Black Death, and so it makes sense to introduce Prequelle with such a track, as it's an album based on mankind’s reaction to an apocalyptic plague. As one witnesses the deaths of everyone and everything, having the scraps of religion, hope, family, love, and life ripped from you, sometimes the only rational thing to do is party like there’s no tomorrow— though there are figures like the Antichrist in the background profiting from the destruction, biding its time and narrating numbers like “Faith” and “Pro Memoria” with wicked glee.
After “Ashes”, listeners are thrown into the track of “Rats”. While it possesses frenetic guitars, a smashing drumline, and hissed-out backing vocals, the song’s production is notably cleaner than anything that’s come before—borderline poppy, even—pulling heavily from the “glam” subgenres of rock and metal. The band’s fictional frontman during this era, Cardinal Copia, is also much more playful than any of the others, balancing Papa Emeritus III’s flirtations, a comedic charm, and a tinge of exasperation one could only find in middle-management. It’s definitely a shift to get used to, but only in presentations— tonally, the lyrics of Prequelle are grimmer than most anything Ghost did prior. The energetic, 80s-esque crowd pleaser song “Dance Macabre” tells the tale of dying lovers sharing one last moment together during the party of “Miasma”, an exuberant instrumental that even features a saxophone solo. Ballads like “Pro Memoria” and “Life Eternal” appear romantic on the surface, but detail a painful longing for the dead and muse over whether immortality is worth it in a siren call for the survivors of the apocalypse sung by the Antichrist.
But after disaster, what’s next for mankind? Ghost’s fifth album, Impera, answered this question with a hilarious lack of subtlety. Inspired by the novel The Rule of Empires by Timothy Parsons, Impera dived headfirst into the cyclical nature of— you guessed it— empires, and their inherently fascist nature— especially as the Antichrist of all things is leading this one. Cardinal Copia has ascended to Papa Emeritus VI, and brings fans what has to be Ghost’s grandest venture with his rise. Mob mentality, cultish figures, manipulation of science to push agendas, and hypocritical leaders exist at the heart of Impera, all while a select few members of the general population struggle with repressing their feelings under this regime—until it all violently spills out to cause the empire’s downfall, starting the cycle anew.
Impera is Ghost’s grandest production, an arena-friendly variety show that leaves the listener curious about what kind of track will come next. It amps up Prequelle’s glam sensibilities quite notably and is also Ghost’s first album to be entirely written in the major key. It’s a far cry from the more occult days of Opus Eponymous, but Impera’s more animated songs are a veil for themes that are blunt in their vile nature; “Kaisarion” is a blood-pumping opening number that has the name of the tragic scholar Hypatia adorning its backing vocals as part of its warning against mob violence, and “Twenties” preys on the ignorance of the masses with a frenzied, villainous call-to-arms that is the least subtle bit of Impera— lest lines like “For the Reich to come to fruition” cause any confusion. The sweeping epic “Respite On the Spitalfields” mourns the empire after its destruction (hinted at in the tense “Spillaways”), a funeral march that tries to paint the regime’s conclusion as tragic.
And now, after the destruction? There’s nothing as of yet. 2024 had the Rite Here, Rite Now concert film showing off both Ghost’s performance at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles, as well as Papa Emeritus IV stepping down from the role (instead of being killed like his predecessors, a first for these Anti-Popes) to tease at a mysterious Papa V arriving to fill his shoes. Ghost’s sixth album has been rumored to have an early 2025 release to coincide with the upcoming tour, though no official confirmation has come as of writing. There’s been plenty of speculation chasing the wave of the upcoming album, about the new Papa, its musical style, and, more importantly, what it may be about thematically. Based on the time patterns of the past three albums covering the Belle Epoque, a time of cataclysm and disease (potentially paralleling the Spanish Flu and WWI), and the rise of a fascist empire, it feels more than right to have an album that pulls from the terror of WWII, a very different, more intentional sort of hollow destruction compared to a plague, with a crueler Papa to match.
But all there is to do is to wait and, for the more introspective, potentially reflect on what got Ghost to this point. Characters, eye-catching theatrics, stories that resonate with people, a varied discography that has remained top-notch for the past fourteen years, it’s all great for catching an audience. But after sitting through hours of their catalog, trying to condense it into some sort of coherent analysis, I find the most appealing aspect of Ghost has to be their willingness to change.
It’s been baked into their DNA since the beginning, evident even in how the initial Papa Emeritus character back in 2010 was labeled as the first in a chain rather than a singular figure. To evolve or stagnate is a battle any creative must endure throughout their career—the former is a tantalizing though terrifying option, as the risks and rewards of experimentation are equally high. But the latter, while safe, comes with the pitfalls of potentially boring an audience. Has Ghost alienated fans? Of course they have. Going from sounding like an esoteric congregation whose musings you’d find on crusty cassettes, to arena-friendly ballads and high-pitched rock-n-roll tracks, is a bit of a hard pivot even if it occurred over fourteen years, sure to lose some fans along the way. But the non-stop efforts to experiment and push their own boundaries makes Ghost a roller coaster ride fans never quite want to end.
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