Yes, you read that headline correctly, Tobias Forge gave an interview to Revolver about the new Ghost album, which will be the band’s fourth. Not Papa Emeritus, or what will undoubtedly be Papa Emeritus IV, he gave an interview as the mastermind of Ghost, without makeup. Some takeaways from the album, which is still untitled: it’s loosely themed around death and doom, themed around medieval times. Song titles include “Rats,” “Dance Macabre” and “Life Eternal.” Aside from the lawsuit that officially unmasked him, Forge’s mother was proudly telling friends that the demonic looking pope was her son. And Forge, whose face isn’t shown in the article although there are shots of him in the studio, says that it was inevitable that his identity would eventually be uncovered:
The original idea of being anonymous — it was a great, naïve idea on paper in 2008, not knowing to what degree we’d be touring or to what extent this was going to be a professional operation. That regimen is very hard to live by. What I hadn’t foreseen was the fans and their willingness to embrace that and play along. [Laughs] I guess that’s the whole thing with showbiz and magic tricks: It’s like you have a silent agreement with your audience.
Now, I feel like this has already become more of an entity on its own. As long as I don’t go onstage completely normal and then jump into character onstage, I assume that most fans would be able to accept me as the creator. I can comment on the work the same way a director would on his movie.
However, that doesn’t mean that they’re going to pull a KISS and become unmasked, as he says “the plan is for it to be even more theatrical and dressed up.” There’s no word on when the album will be out, but the album was being mixed last month in West Hollywood, so we should be hearing something from it in the next few months.
