Swedish goth rockers Ghost conjure the unholy spirit

They who cannot be named: Ghost conjures the unholy spirit

by Christine Leonard
11 October 2016

“I have an assigned task and that’s to speak to you,” flatly iterates the Nameless Ghoul on the other end of the line.

After all, as contradictory as it may seem, anonymity is at the aesthetic coeur of his band’s identity. Emanating from Linköping, Sweden in 2008, Ghost (known as Ghost B.C. in the United States) is a gothic-rock outfit that draws their dramatic and visually stimulating persona from dark religious imagery that is typically associated with the realms of heavy metal.

Recipients of multiple Swedish Grammis Awards, for their albums Infestissumam in 2014 and Meliora in 2015, the six-member ensemble paraded down the aisle and into the international spotlight this past February when they accepted the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance for the Meliora single “Cirice.” Led by their highly-decorated anti-papal overlord, Papa Emeritus III (two previous Papas have already been retired – to the South of France, one would presume), Ghost’s five Nameless Ghoul instrumentalists drew stares of Los Angelian disbelief as they mounted the dais in mouthless Minotaur masks.

“Whether or not this is a comment or rock stardom, initially the whole image was just something that suited the music. We never counted on being popular,” the customarily mute minion explains.

“Even though we had achieved some success in Europe beforehand, America has always been the growing ground for us. This is by far where we have played the most and where we spend most of the touring cycle. We’ve come to a level now, which I really enjoy, where we want to play everywhere. We’ve always been very insistent that we weren’t really doing the work unless we were playing Medicine Hat and Kamloops.”

Proving that humour is never far removed from tragedy, Ghost has rendered the imposing genres of hard rock and metal more accessible to general audiences thanks to projects like their EP, If You Have Ghost, which included cover songs produced by Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters. The faithful masses have also responded favourably to Ghost’s most recent EP, the September-released Popestar, which features covers of Eurythmics and Echo & the Bunnymen alongside the anthemic band’s “strongest concert-opener” to date, “Square Hammer.”

“I don’t think that anything would have been successful had we not done the tours. We would never have been nominated for or received a Grammy. We would never have been signed to our American label. Had we not done the tours I don’t think Dave Grohl would have known who we are; so, I am a firm believer in touring. I think that that is the shit.”

And now that they’ve rocked a million faces, Ghost has some very pragmatic reasons for not revealing their own.

“It’s a hard one,” says he-who-cannot-be-named. “Some of us get recognized to a certain degree; there’s always someone in a record store or guitar shop coming up and whispering ‘I love your band. Thank you!’ Whereas for more normal bands they are not subjected to that level of respect. Because if you are an artist and you put yourself out there, and you have an Instagram account and you’re photographing everything you’re about to consume, I think people, more or less, will regard you as some sort of public domain. And, you are also sort of expected to be your onstage persona to a much further degree than we ever are. I must say that any wishes that you might have had as a younger person of wanting to be recognized, to the point where we are recognized in our street clothes, I don’t feel I’d like that to be happening on an everyday basis. It feels being very comfortable being able to step in and out of that recognition.”

Able to reconcile the oppositional forces of fame and freedom, Ghost’s avoidance of celebrity status while exploiting cultural iconography is perhaps their greatest artistic achievement. Relying on archetypal constructs to elicit an emotional reaction is nothing new in the world of agent provocateurs, but Papa Emeritus III and his entourage of elemental familiars have brought a burgeoning generation of fans into their demon-strative fold with a flair for creating musical rituals that leave a lasting impression.

“Our thing has always been look bigger than you are and you will become bigger! If you’re going to take it to the arenas, you’d better look like an arena band. Otherwise why would they believe you?”

He continues. “Now we’ve swum out way too far. That’s why we’re doing this tour with all of the new pyro and production and all of the staging stuff, because no one is going to applaud if we don’t show up with big things.”

Ghost perform with Marissa Nadler at MacEwan Hall in Calgary on October 11th and at the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver on October 13th.