Please be seated. You are about to receive the fifth sermon from our honourable Swedish clergymen Ghost. For they have returned, and this time Papa Emeritus is in charge again.
Is there anyone who hasn’t heard about Ghost yet? Far from everybody likes them, but even in order to dislike them you will have achieved a certain level of familiarity. Still, as the informative site we aim to be, here is a short synopsis of what the hoopla is all about.
Ghost is a Swedish band/project who have already been active for about fifteen years. They are easily recognizable due to their eccentric on-stage presence and controversial image. Seven of the group’s eight members are referred to as the ‘Nameless Ghouls’, all of them wearing identical costumes and face-concealing masks. They are led by Papa Emeritus – a religious figurehead with the appearance of a pope of darkness.
The Papa Emeritus character has gone through several incarnations, as part of the concept is that between each album/tour cycle, the lead character changes. There have been five incarnations so far: I, II, III, Nihil, and IV. With the release of the 2018 album Prequelle, Forge portrayed a character known as Cardinal Copia, who is described as being unrelated to any of the Papa Emeritus characters and whose costume consists of either cardinal vestments or a black or white tuxedo alongside a prosthetic mask. In time for the fifth album, Forge once again assumed the mantle of Papa Emeritus.
Initially, nobody knew who any of the band were. This changed in 2017, when a lawsuit was filed on behalf of four Nameless Ghouls to secure their co-ownership of the band and just payments. The case was dismissed, but at this point, Tobias Forge was revealed to be the man behind the Emeritus characters and the de facto leader of the band/project. Most of the former Nameless Ghouls are also known today, while there is still a shroud of secrecy around current members of the band.
For those of us who were fans of KISS back in the 1970s, the secrecy is certainly a cool throwback to a time when we didn’t know what our heroes looked like without the make-up.
The last few shows of the Prequelle tour were played in early 2020. Forge had planned to take a short break before attempting something he had never done before: hire an office to be used as a creative space, and go to work every day like an office worker. He planned to spend normal working hours writing songs, then leave and be home with his family every afternoon in time for dinner.
It sounded like an interesting challenge. It just happened to coincide with the outbreak of Covid-19. Given Sweden’s lack of restrictions during the early stages of the pandemic, the plan was still possible to do, but it’s not unlikely that alternate plans were made.
While it was originally planned for the band to record the album in 2020 and release it in early 2021, the band ended up waiting until January 2021 to enter the studio. The sessions lasted six weeks, with Klas Åhlund producing. He had previously also produced their third album Meloria.
Musically, Impera has been described as hard rock, arena rock, glam metal, heavy metal, and pop rock. All of this is par for the course. Ghost has a very dark and even satanic image, and then they start playing and sound like something completely different.
It’s normal for people not to know what to make of the band. They will have one opinion just from looking at them, and find it hard to change that even when the music is nothing like what they imagined.
Ghost’s Satanic theme and appearance has proven problematic for the group – especially in the United States, where the band have found their music banned from major chain stores, most late-night television shows, and most commercial radio stations. When recording Infestissumam (2012) in Nashville, they were unable to find choral singers who would sing their lyrics, and the group were also unable to find a record manufacturer in the US who would press the cover.
Things have gotten better in recent years, with late show hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel allowing them to appear on their shows and people increasingly catching on to what the band is about.
History is full of examples where bands were judged on their looks rather than their actual messages and/or musical contents. Look at the old urban legend around KISS being an acronym for Knights In Satan’s Service. This was instantly and uncritically accepted as fact by far too many back then.
I guess it is unavoidable that we sometimes listen with both our eyes and ears. Hearing a song without looking at the artist or album cover, and without knowing who it is, will often give a totally different impression than when you see who’s behind it and their appearance. I’ve had someone tell me with a very straight face that Iron Maiden was a death metal band. Their basis? The album cover for The Number of the Beast.
In the case of Ghost, it will take less than a minute of genuine study to determine that we are talking about cartoon spookiness here. What Ghost are doing is playing melodic, catchy songs dressed up in gothic metal theatrics.
To say it as clearly as possible: this is ABBA meets Black Sabbath. The pop sensibilities and glitz of the former, combined with the guitars and overall image of the latter. Just like the Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy’s classification of Earth, Ghost are truly “mostly harmless.”
As far as intros go, that was a long one. Thanks for your patience.
So, finally: how is the new album?
Imperia has been described as several things. There are more musical references than normal to several types of 1980s pop and rock, with names like Boston, Dio, Bon Jovi, and Def Leppard popping up in most reviews. Out of these, Def Leppard is certainly a new influence, and an interesting one. Impera is without question the clearest example of Ghost doing arena rock to date, with several big choruses and melodic glam/hard rock sensibilities. It sounds huge!
The previous album Prequelle was often more atmospheric and melodic/ballad-heavy (not at all a complaint – it is an amazing and frequently utterly beautiful album), so the new album is expectedly going in a different direction. As we learn, though, it’s primarily a different side of the same coin.
Several bands have taken inspiration from 1980s AOR/hard rock in recent years, with some bands even being pure pastiches of that decade. In many ways, Impera is Ghost doing the same thing. And frankly, I think they do it better than just about anyone.
Topically, Tobias Forge is proving himself to be some sort of prophet. Where Prequelle dealt with plague and sickness before the Covid pandemic had even begun, Imperia is a consideration of empires that grow and rule and then crash and burn, only to be replaced by other empires. Forge put it together before the current crisis as Russia tries to regain the former stature and power (and size) of the Soviet Union. Is Forge a soothsayer or does he just pay better attention than the rest of us?
Impera’s stated concept – the rise and fall of nations and empires – allows Forge and his latest band of (now steampunk) Nameless Ghouls to find pertinent links between the follies of dynasties Roman, Russian… and Trumpian.
As usual, the album starts with an instrumental interlude – or, an intro if you will. Imperium is, as the case often is, a moody piece of music which establishes a theme. Dual lead guitars come in to enhance it, and the song goes into rock territory. I see this as a tremendous piece of walk-on/intro music for the tour.
The intro leads directly into Kaisarion. The album’s first full, proper song is victorious and celebratory in feel, bursting forth with an infectious and positive energy as dual lead guitars heralds the coming of the band with a truly wondrous harmony part. The song is very accessible, with Forge utilising every songwriting trick in his arsenal to put melodic hooks in the music as early as possible.
We will hear those dual guitars frequently on the album, and they are worth looking at in an overall sense. There are several aspects of Ghost’s music that are easy to love – especially those incredible guitar harmonies that infuse nearly every song. Twin lead guitars feature prominently in classic hard rock, and Ghost frequently take it one step further, using them as a harmony element in the song itself rather than just having an extra cool dual solo section. They are careful in not overstating their use, and using them differently from song to song as well, so they never outstay their welcome. They are, shortly spoken, an incredible element throughout the album, and instead of repeating this for every song, you can pretty much take it as read from now on that every song are full of these wonderful guitar harmonics, and that it will be one of my favourite aspects of that song.
The album moves onwards into the 1980s-tinged Spillways. It is up-tempo, it is catchy, and it is more blatantly paying homage to that most colourful and fun decade than any other song on the album. From the Bon Jovi-style piano intro which makes us think back to their first hit Runaway, to the big Def Leppard-style gang vocal choruses, this is a track that will work extremely well live.
The solo might remind us of Brian May and Queen, which Forge is the first to admit. He told Apple Music “I like stacking solos and adding harmonies, which automatically puts you in Brian May territory.”
As is often the case, the colourful and upbeat melodic qualities of the track is hiding lyrics of a darker ilk. “This is an elegy for the darkness that most people have inside,” Tobias Forge said. “When you have a dam, spillways are the run-offs so the dam won’t overflow. Similarly, that darkness inside us needs to find its way out.”
Speaking of songs with a darker side to them, look no further than Call Me Little Sunshine. The ominous track starts broodingly and slowly, with a simple guitar part setting the tone before it reveals the full width of its power. The lyrics paint the tale of an ominous stalker – a devil-figure – who are promising to someone that they never have to be alone. They can be reached day or night. A good promise, or a sinister reminder that you will never quite be free of someone’s influence?
The song is meant to have a bigger context than that, though. When Forge speaks of the song, he talks about how Victorian England (and the world) were forever changed by the Industrial Revolution. Lives were altered, for good and bad, as the devil tempted folks to go farther and farther into the technology at the expense of human contact and relationships. The lyrics have implications for past, present and future. Somewhat contrary to normal subject matter for Ghost, Forge is actually intending to warn us about Satan and his temptations here.
The track was the second single from Impera, premiered with a music video on 20 January 2022. Musically, the track bring forth vibes of old-school Ghost. It isn’t a mile away from thee classic track Cirice (from 2015’s Meliora).
The first taste from the album was Hunter’s Moon, released in September 2021 to promote the movie Halloween Kills where it accompanies the end credits.
It was probably only a matter of time before Ghost were given the chance to contribute music to a horror movie. An executive at the company creating the franchise attended Ghost’s show at the LA Forum in November 2018, loved the show, and connected Forge to the film’s co-writer and director David Gordon Green. It seemed a match made in … well, maybe not heaven?
Very little is left to chance when it comes to Ghost, so it comes as no surprise that the theme of the song matches that of the movie. To avoid spoilers, let’s simply say that they both deal with a yearning for someone from the past. The track features a very tasteful guitar solo from Opeth’s Fredrik Åkesson.
Watcher In the Sky is a mix of up-tempo hard rock with a huge beat that you can dance to. It is filled with big guitar chords and builds into a track of huge scope, which is befitting a track which looks at how science can have unintended effects on people and society. Science can be misused as well as used.
Forge gets a little more specific in conversation with Apple Music: “This one reverts back to the imperial world of Flat Earth Society members, basically. The narration is calling upon the scientific community to use whatever science we have here within this empire to stop looking at the stars and look for God instead. Can we reverse the tools that we have to watch the stars to communicate with the Lord? And is there any way to scientifically prove that the world is actually flat? Because it looks awfully flat from where we’re standing. So it’s a song about regression.”
Dominion is slow and majestic, and not so much a segue as a solemn melodic interlude. Or maybe ‘palette cleanser’ is more appropriate, as we prepare for the band’s most eccentric song to date.
And how to approach Twenties? It’s bonkers, quirky, different, yet with the usual catchy hooks intact. It is definitely a grower. Some like it, others do not. And it is probably the most discussed track on the album.
One can at the very least make a case for it not really fitting in with the rest of the album musically, but ultimately, this may be why it ends up adding tons to it. Lyrically, it certainly fits the focus on empires coming and going, although it might hit too close for comfort.
The lyrics – or at least the way they are delivered – are crazy, but there is method to the madness. Many of us will still instinctively think of the 1920s when “the twenties” are bandied about, while others have made the adjustment to the new twenties that we are living in. There’s definitely room for confusion – are we talking about the old or the new twenties? In this song, however, Forge is looking at both of them, doing a good job of drawing parallel lines between the old and new.
“That song has super-aggressive lyrics,” Forge told Kerrang! “It’s very hostile. It’s still meant as a pep-talk, but it’s basically demeaning and openly hating anyone who’s listening. It promises only air, but poisoned air. And yet it still wraps it up as a gift, as something you should say ‘thank you’ for. Which is like a lot of the bullshit that we’ve been seeing the past couple of years.”
The Swinging 1920s were a turbulent time. It was a time of big contrasts. We had poverty alongside wealth and some levels of decadence. At the same time, new empires of Nazism and Fascism started to make their presence felt. Eventually financial empires would implode into the Great Depression. Is that where we are headed? The song outlines clear similarities and similar conclusions between the decades. Let’s hope Forge is more of a musician than a soothsayer on that one. The images are grim, but hard to dismiss.
Musically, the song is also very different with its dramatic orchestration, a creepy children’s chorus refrain, and a tone evoking both the excitement of prosperity and the simultaneous fear of losing it. It is a hard song to categorize, as illustrated by Forge describing it as ‘Slayer meets Missy Elliott’. Personally I hear neither of those influences here, but the statement primarily tells us that the track is going to be anything but straightforward. Fredrik Åkesson of Opeth reappears on this track, playing the guitar solo.
I love this track, but more than that, I see it as an exciting path forward. The band clearly have the means to experiment and try different things, and this might be the biggest attempt at doing that yet.
Ghost will have a choice to make on their coming albums: do they stay within the template that is now established, or will they draw even further outside those lines? Could they become even more theatrical to the point where even some of the familiar trademarks could be shed?
In my ears, the song is 100% Ghost, simply viewed through a different set of lenses. It is one of the most refreshing songs on the album, but it wasn’t an immediate conclusion to arrive at.
In the Twenties (Twenties)
We’ll be singing in a reign of pennies
In the Twenties (Twenties)
We’ll be soaring in disguise of Bevies
In the Twenties (Twenties)
We’ll be smooching at the feet of Da Rulah
In the Twenties (Twenties)
We’ll be grinding in a pile of moolah
Darkness At the Heart of My Love is something entirely different. It almost takes the form of a hymn, containing an almost quiet (and certainly atmospheric) build-up in the verses. The choruses feature choirs, guitar harmonies, and a gloriously elevated mood compared to the rest of the track. It is a sweet song, a love song – although it has the Ghost brooding. Maybe we can call it a love dirge.
Although, things are as usual not what they seem. As Forge explains to Metal Hammer, the love is promised but never practiced: “This is about people promoting all of these values under the guise of being God-fearing and righteous while they practise none of it. It’s just for cash and power.”
The sweetness in the performance cannot be dismissed, though. “I am with you always,” seems like a lovely promise, but the warning is repeated in the title and main chorus line: “There’s a darkness at the heart of my love for you.” It may not be as true as it sounds.
Ghost once again cast their eyes on the 1980s in Griftwood, which is the album’s classic metal moment. The initial guitar intro channels the tapping style of Van Halen, as does the mail solo which just flies off the fretboard.
“I love Hollywood rock like Van Halen and Mötley Crüe,” Forge told Apple Music, “and it just feels fitting to have an uplifting track towards the end of the record. Musically, one thing that inspired the more Sunset Strip-elements of the song was knowing that it was going to throw you off with a really long curveball that felt like something no Sunset Strip band has ever done. And that enabled the more glossy bits to be even more in line with the traditional elements of an early-80s Sunset Strip song.”
Lyrically, the song packs a heavy punch as well. The song was allegedly directly inspired about a former US Vice President, although the track is really about anyone who will say or do anything to advance themselves. Forge still sounds outraged as he speaks about people who preaches one message that puts them in a good light, but acts in an entirely different way. He refers to the person in question as “an example of men who promise the world ‘you’ll never ever suffer again.’ Not even Jesus would promise that.”
It’s always a dangerous exercise to get political, especially on behalf of countries where this area has become so divisive. In some territories, displaying a political opinion may now be more controversial to more people than the quasi-Satanic image that the band projects.
The lyrics are however more eloquent than you’d think given the inspiration behind the track. It speaks in broader terms and pulls in some biblical references on its own. Those, by the way, are plentiful on this album, even though they at times can be relatively obscure. Elsewhere on the album, Forge mentions biblical figures like Asiah and Sennacherib. Hardly straightforward references, are they? Most Christians (let alone anyone else) would very likely struggle to place them. Forge is either extremely well read/researched on the subjects he tackles, or has good help. In any case it is effective, and no references ever feel like they are flaunted just for show.
Bite of Passage is a brief instrumental interlude, or in this case, an intro which takes us directly into the following track. It takes the mood down, preparing us for the album’s finale of Victorian terror as we delve into the story of England’s most famous serial killer Jack the Ripper.
Respite On the Spitalfields is epic in scale and a grand finale, just as we’d expect. It is simply magnificent in scope, with a gorgeous melody and a wonderfully structured musical arrangement.
“This one is about Jack the Ripper, who was never found,” Forge told Classic Rock about the song’s inspiration. “As a horror fan, the Victorian era has so many cornerstones of gothic darkness. I’ve always been fond of that Victorian part of London and its dirt and industry-meets-posh, white glove aristocracy.”
The track clearly sets itself up for a majestic build from the get-go, with The choruses have a power and emotional heft similar to the best power ballads of yore, without otherwise belonging in that category. It is a very melodic track filled with verses, bridges, and transitions that keeps passing the song between them in intriguing ways as the tale unfolds. The song is, simply speaking, of immense quality and extraordinary in every way.
Towards the end, the song enters a coda which brings back the initial theme from the album’s intro track Imperium, which brings us full circle. This point is especially effective if the CD is played on repeat and we move from the final track into that first intro again. Just as one empire ends, another one begins, and history has a tendency to repeat itself.
Impera is simply speaking an amazing effort. It is an album I wasn’t sure they would manage to deliver. I was such a big fan of Prequelle, which has a very unique sound and style. It isn’t every Ghost fan’s favourite album, and breaks away a bit from previous albums. Impera manages the art of continuing the path laid out on Prequelle while reconnecting a bit with earlier albums, which should make everybody happy. At the same time, the album has elements pointing ever forward. It will be very exciting to see where they go from here.
And so, in the year of our lord 2022, Ghost delivered Impera. And lo, it is good.
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