A few years ago, Ghost changed their name to Ghost B.C. in America, due to legal issues during the release of their 2013 album Infestissumam and even though no one really cared about using the suffix when referring to the band,it was still there. The assumption was that probably there was a lawsuit regarding the use of the name “Ghost” which is usually the reason why bands add those suffix to their bands but during an interview with Loudwire, one of the Nameless Ghouls finally explained the reason behind the change and some good news:
The thing was there was never a lawsuit… It was basically, I have to just explain myself after I hang one institution out to dry here and that was not our real label, but the bigger umbrella version of our label. Unfortunately in the legal world in general, and it’s not an anti-American thing, but especially in America where people are so conscious about not being sued, obviously all corporations are extremely conscious about not getting sued. So the big major label, specifically, had a policy that said that every artist they sign must own their own name. Obviously we don’t have exclusive rights to our band name because it’s a word so commonly used. There are so many brands that have the word “ghost” that I think it’s almost un-ownable, in a way, unless it’s more specific. So it was basically a demand from the label that we added something.
What we found least irritating was that if it was something short for something else. We added the B.C. ‘Because of Copyright’ or, obviously, ‘Before Christ.’ We wanted people to still focus on Ghost. Unfortunately that leaked over into the promotional side too just because they tagged everything ‘Ghost B.C.’ everyone started calling it that. While we told every promoter and every journalist that we spoke to, ‘Don’t write Ghost B.C. because that’s not our name.’ It’s like saying, ‘I’m going to go down to McDonalds LLC or McDonalds, Inc. and buy a burger.’ So this time around, when we had a little bit of a flip within the company, we took the opportunity to raise the question and make it happen so that we don’t have to write it out on the record. There’s something extremely unromantic that’s called metadata and within the metadata in all the regions that we need to, it’s still B.C. It’s there in the fine print, but for you and I and everybody else, we don’t have to say that. So it’s Ghost now, which I’m extremely happy about.
Basically it was their label, Loma Vista, trying to cover their rears in case of a lawsuit for the use of the extremely common word but there was no need to do that so now, the band can go back to be simply Ghost. Their latest album Meliora is set to be released on August 21st.
