Their performance will be good for two senses at the same time. Ghost not only offers energetic and imaginative metal music mixed with a number of other styles (hard rock, pop rock, black metal, psychedelia) but also draws on the work of the giants of rock history, their performances are a treat too. , because the fixed part is the theatrical component.

The texts are sometimes anti-Christian, even satanic. In America, because of this, church circles have held back against the band, and even protested at its concert venues. However, singer and sole boss Tobias Forge said: “We don’t have a militant program, we are an entertainment group. We also deal with how people relate to gods or gods, as well as subordination, superstition or religion.”

Ghost was born in Linköping, Sweden in 2006. Forge led the band under the pseudonym Papa Emeritus and changed the Roman numerals behind them. With the current album Impera (2022) is Papa Emeritus IV, but with the last record Prequelle (2018) is Cardinal Copia. The other members of the band are anonymous and refer to themselves as The Nameless Ghouls. They changed, the frontman remained.

“I’ve always been a huge Kiss fan,” Forge said. “Most of their fans will know the band’s period from the photos, depending on what the musicians are wearing. That’s why it occurred to me that in order for my group to not grow old, I should also make the stage. So every album is different in many ways. It also creates nostalgia I come from a heavy metal environment and I know how important that is. Attention is lacking these days, so I want people to be able to say, “I was there when this part of the Ghost era happened.”

Forge thus dedicates the album to various historical events. In previous works, Prequelle discussed plague epidemics in Medieval Europe, the novel Impera with the birth and fall of empires, war machines and the ups and downs of society.

“We live in a time when we believe that history is the past and that everything we experience is eternal. But that’s not true. Maybe the foundations of a society that can work for a while are laid here, but if you look at history, you’ll find that there are natural cycle in it. Society is built, perfected and then destroyed. Even dictatorships. Wherever there is a dictator, and wherever there is a system, it will collapse over time. This is a cycle of things. On the one hand, we must destroy in order for us to can rebuild. However, this does not mean that you have to destroy everything,” explains Forge’s new record philosophy.

His words sounded almost sinister today. But the dark vision implied is certainly not the reason why Impera’s new album has had such positive reviews and has topped the charts in both the UK and Americas genre sales charts.