(Photo Credit: Kelly Frazier)
The first time hearing Ghost, you might not know what to make of them, and then when you see them, you really might not know what to think about it all. They are very theatrical. It's very influenced by the larger-than-life ascetic of rock-n-roll from past generations, the days before the grunge era of the early 1990s. Sonically, Ghost is old school drawing from various ideals of melody, sound, and arrangement from another time. The visual presence of Ghost questions their intentions. The more basic of minds would ask if they are worshipping Satan, whereas the more level-headed of artistic people would know that this is theater, a grand stage show that's enormity in sight and sound is only there for the goal to entertain and amaze.
The Swedish band have broken through in America with much acclaim, even garnering a Grammy for their latest album Meliora. They are a band then even in their humble beginnings, their fans embraced them with much passion. The popularity in America wasn't necessarily the breakthrough point for the band itself or nor were they ever in this to be a part of the contemporary rock culture, it was just another successful step for them that was really out of their control. Ghost, in some regards, is the odd man out of rock music these days, but that's probably what's attractive about them.
The first Ghost concert I was able to attend happened in October 2015 at the Majestic Theatre in Detroit. With a sold out crowd, the vibe was electric and the crowd seemed so happy to be there witnessing something more than just a concert, it was a massive form of musical theater like something a young Alice Cooper might have done. It's not just a band playing songs up there, it's built to be consumed in a big way.
While at the Rock on the Range music festival on Columbus, Ohio, I was able to talk with the Nameless Ghoul of Ghost and we talked about their beginnings, the theatrical nature of the bands, and how much they truly don't fit in with the other rock bands in America.
With the latest album, Ghost became this entity that was able to breakthrough into the mainstream here in the States and become sort of the darlings of the music media for hard rock even though they vastly ignore this type of music. What's your thoughts about the position that you're in here in the States?
From our own career point of view, of course we're happy that we're growing. From that point of view, it's fantastic. I'm really glad that we've been able to cross the threshold that we clearly hadn't done before in the whole radio world. Obviously, with the Grammy and all of that, it sort of opened up a lot of doors for us that you can clearly feel on this tour and setting up a new tour in the fall, its definitely more welcoming. And I must say that ever since we started playing in America, it has always felt like we were constantly taking steps up. Its never been the opposite for us, like hard. Its always been like that. The first tour that we did was a headlining tour ourselves with two opening bands. We sold out most of the shows and we did incredibly with merch. Its never really felt like times have changed, but it does feel like we are definitely closing in on what we set out to achieve in the sense that we wanted to be a bigger production band and wanted to play bigger venues in order to sort of reenact the show that we want to. We are not a "t-shirt" band, if most people have notice. We are a show. We are a spectacle. As much as we all come from a personal punk point of view think its fun sometimes to place an intimate show, it's meant to be in bigger setting. That's where we do best I think.
Ghost is a very theatrical entity.
To answer your question on that one, yeah, especially now when we have teamed up with the contemporary rock bands that are around. These radio festivals are like, this is top 30 active rock radio basically. This is what's going on. I will not pass judgment on whatever I think about all the other bands, like personally, I am very fond of many of the people that are in these bands. Musically, I feel extremely apart basically from everything that is been going on in hard rock music for the last 25 years, 20 years at least. I guess, from a positive point of view, what some people, our fans say has to do with that apart-ness. Ever since the whole nu-metal thing happened, all these genres have sort of spawned from there. Deathcore. Metalcore. For me, it's just nu-metal. That's all. That's nu-metal that's about family issues and having divorced parents and thinking that life sucks. For me, I've always, always hated it ever since like 1995 or something like that when the first bands sort of came. I absolutely loathed it. Nothing has really happened during the last 20 years. It was grunge, and then came nu-metal. That was it. It's still nu-metal. If we can be any seasoning on that, that can make this thing taste a little bit better, I'm ecstatically happy (laughs).
When you talk about being apart, being away from what's rock has been in the past 20 years or so, how do you think Ghost has been able to be unique and stay away from what's trendy as you get more popular?
Of course, that's an enormous achievement personally because you can't really control that yourself since we never set out to be a part of anything contemporary. I think that's part of one of the things that now in hindsight, knowing what we know today about our band and our career and how things turned out or how things are moving, you could not plan it. I think that is what we see, especially on these festivals. Like you have these Korn's. You have the older bands, like Korn was like the nu-metal band because they were one of the bands that created it. Then you have all these bands underneath them that are basically influenced by Korn, and are influenced by these bands that came out in the mid-90s. That gets a little regurgitation-ness. That's usually the biggest problems with musical waves. You have your originators, then comes maybe a few successful second-wavers like a year after, and then two years after comes the bands that listened to the first band and sort of repeat that. That is one of the things that has baffled me over the last 20 years is like how long can you do the same thing. Its just the same shit, just over and over and over again. When we started out, it's was never to be part of really anything. We had such a more of an underground point of view where we were sort of rooted more in the extreme underground. For me, coming from extreme metal in like pre-'95, I never regarded nu-metal as extreme. I thought that if you wanted to listen to extreme music, you listened to Possessed, Morbid Angel, or Nercomorph. That is extreme music. Limp Bizkit is not extreme. We never thought like six years ago or eight years ago that we're going to create this costume band and conquer American and be a part of the contemporary nu-metal scene. To put it into perspective, how we feel a little bit now like fuck we are absolutely sort of alone in this context where I actually feel more affiliated or more close conceptually to a band like Steel Panther because they are doing basically what we are doing, but in a completely different way. They are doing their Sunset Strip sort of rock shtick and we're doing some sort of shock rock horror, but it's a theater, its theatrical, and its more old school in that way.
(Photo Credit: Kelly Frazier)
When you look back to the beginnings of Ghost, what pops out in your mind about when this entity was starting to take shape?
One of the things that really got me triggered to fully engage myself in the idea of trying to make something with Ghost was that musically, when there was just a few songs recorded, when there were very, very few people that actually knew about these songs even existing - I played it for a few friends and those friends had a file on their computer and played it for some other friends - was the fact that obviously the people liked it and people liked it a lot. Even the first ten people were raving ecstatic about it and saying 'Guys, you really, really, really need to like do more'. They were so enthusiastic and they were really supportive. We thought it was just going to be like a little side project. We thought it was just be a single and that was it. It was just a fun thing. That support was fueled with the euphoria of knowing, shit I can combine the more extreme metal elements together with pop and all the stuff that I like too, into one sort of mesh that actually feels intuitive. Just to give you also a modern band. One band that I actually like from the modern time is System Of A Down. I think they are one of the few bands that is really creative and they mix different things. System Of A Down makes it seamless. I had a similar feeling with Ghost. It was like oh shit if I just intuitively play, I have a death metal sounding riff, but its okay, if I just fuck everything I know about genres, it will be good. Then you send one more song to your friends and they are like 'Oh great! It sounds even better. This is your best song!' And you're like 'Alright'. That was one of the earliest memories that was an enthusiasm that I still have to this day with when it comes to writing new songs. It really feels like shit, we can try a little bit of everything here. We can have a soft piano part. We can have a soft piano song even. We can write a ballad that doesn't sound hard rock at all. That for me is very, very rewarding that we don't have to be like 'How do we do this thing again?' We don't have to rely on being super brutal, coming up with the fastest song, or the most agro, it can be a little bit of everything. That is very liberating.
Ghost is a very theatrical thing and your fans really embrace the live shows just like any other great theatrical performance. What are you setting out to accomplish during your performances?
We want people to be happy and euphoric. Usually, if you're referring to the real shows, not these, the whole show is orchestrated in way that dramaturgetly you get from one place to another in the sense that we start very dark and very sort of mystic, and further you go, in the end, its quite classic rock-n-roll sort of slapstick fun and quite humoristic and loose. Basically, in a way, what we set out to do is a lot of the things that we ourselves wanted to see because, as music fans, we go to a lot of shows, even band that you like, and I've seen bands that I really admire who bring the worse show ever like 'What is this?" This is not entertainment. At the end of the day, and I think some bands, especially in the underground feels like 'Oh. We're not entertainment. We just play for ourselves.' Are you really? If you really want to just play for yourselves, don't release a record. Play in your rehearsal room. That's playing for yourselves. As soon as you play in front of people, you are, in fact, an entertainment act. You're entertaining people. GG Allin was an entertainer. It's entertainment, so you have to consider it as something as a product, for lack of a nicer phrase, and you have to deliver. Basically, a lot of things that you see us do is a lot of the things that we felt we didn't see a whole lot of, especially 10 years ago. We're just trying to get everybody happy (laughs), and ourselves obviously. Most of the time, they are, and we're feeding a lot from the crowd.
For more information on Ghost, visit ghost-official.com.