Ghost’s driving force and creator, Tobias Forge, has enlisted the aid of Opeth guitarist Fredrik Åkesson for the recording of the band’s forthcoming album Impera coming March 11th.

Tobias Forge had this to say:

“…I’m a little bit of a jack of all trades when it comes to actual playing. I’m an able drummer, a bass player, an able guitar player, but I’m not a virtuoso.

This time around, I actually had another guitar player coming in, mounting the massive work of actually redoing everything. I’ve played guitar all my life, but, unlike most guitar players who are in successful bands, they play as they tour. I am doing a whole slew of other things, so, it almost feels like every time I saw start writing again, and demoing and doing pre-production, I quickly have to go up to par again.

On, tour for example, I mostly play drums, actually, in a rehearsal room in the back that we usually do as a warm up. Part of my daily exercises, I play drums for an hour, but I tend to forget to play guitar. When making this record, the demos dictates what to play — you can always figure that out and there’s always ways to redo, undo and piece things together.

But when it came to actually performing, I had a friend of mine, Fredrik Åkesson, the guitar player from Opeth. He’s the sort of person who plays five hours every day. He’s so amazingly talented. He can play circles around anything that I put on tape and he can do it with flair.”

Ghost’s new album, Impera, is scheduled to arrive on March 11th via Loma Vista. The Swedish outfit has unveiled a music video for the single “Call Me Little Sunshine,” which you can watch at this location. The group recently kicked off their tour with Volbeat, as they debuted another new track, “Kaisarion,” live. 

Watch the fan-filmed performance clip below: