“What I’ve tried to do is make Ghost a little more Queen than AC/DC,” Tobias Forge told Classic Rock of the ambition that drove his band’s fourth album, 2018’s Prequelle.
Ghost’s frontman was referring not just to the iconic British band’s sense of musical grandeur, but the fact that they would mix-and-match styles across their albums, from heavy rock blowouts and soaring ballads to operatic epics and even knockabout ragtime songs.
Prequelle was Tobias’ attempt to replicate that shapeshifting approach – something never more apparent than on the brilliant Dance Macabre, a ridiculously OTT, 80s-inspired pop-metal banger that put Ghost squarely in the middle of the dancefloor.
Prequelle arrived at a significant point in Ghost’s career. Until that point, Tobias’ identity had ostensibly been secret. He had adopted the guise of a series of masked undead papal figures, from the original Papa Emeritus around the band’s 2010 debut album Opus Eponymous through his successors, Papa II and Papa III on 2013’s Infestissumam and 2015’s Meliora respectively.
But when the frontman was hit by a lawsuit from disgruntled former bandmates in 2017, the cat was let out of the bag. It was fairly common knowledge that Forge, a former member of everyone from death metallers Repugnant to alt-rockers Subvision, was involved in Ghost, but now the world had confirmation that he was the man behind the Papa mask.
“I didn’t think of it as a Ghost thing. But I showed it to some pals and they were like, ‘That’s a Ghost song!’”
Tobias Forge
“It did make life easier,” the frontman told Planet Rock of his ‘outing’ as the man behind Ghost. “Because, before that, we had to put in a lot of extra effort in order for me to not be visible. And it did create a few image-keeping upsides but a lot of practical downsides. It was just uncomfortable. It made people feel uncomfortable. It made for a lot of misunderstandings and a lot of… it was just making life hard.”
Tobias didn’t ditch the masks – Prequelle found him adopting the role of Cardinal Copia, a more youthful, agile alternative to the previous Papas. But ditching the burden of anonymity seemed to liberate him musically, something encapsulated by the unashamedly slick sound of Prequelle, and its undoubted highlight, Dance Macabre.
Tobias had written radio-friendly songs before, not least the band’s 2016 breakthrough Square Hammer. But Dance Macabre took it to another level. Powered by a thumping near-disco beat, Dance Macabre went straight for the commercial jugular – unsurprising since Tobias co-wrote it with songwriting duo Vincent Pontare and Salem Al Fakir, whose other credits include Madonna, Katy Perry and superstar DJ David Guetta.
“I had the riff that starts the whole song, that was just a riff that got stuck in my head,” he told Guitar World. “I didn’t think of it as a Ghost thing at first. But I showed it to some songwriting pals of mine and they were like, ‘That’s a Ghost song!’”
It was the right decision. The finished song was an absolute monster, building on the pop-edged promise of tracks such as Cirice and Square Hammer – not least when most of the instruments dropped out, leaving just that air-punching beat and Tobias’ clarion call: “Just wanna be, bewitch you in the moonlight / Just wanna be, bewitch you all night.”
In typical Ghost fashion, the lyrics worked on more than one level. On the surface, it was a love song – or even a lust song. But the title Dance Macabre referred to a medieval phenomenon centred around an outbreak of the bubonic plague spread by vermin (itself tying in to Prequelle’s first single, Rats).
“People were lying in the streets – corpses and all the surroundings were just falling apart,” Tobias told Revolver. “All the brothels and pubs were thriving because people started partying literally like there was no tomorrow because they were gonna die. They were just going for it. Dance Macabre is capturing that joyous nocturnal sort of life in a disco song.”
Dance Macabre was released as a single in May 2018, just a few days before Prequelle. It was teased by an Instagram clip featuring the likes of Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett, Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante and Pantera vocalist Phil Anselmo rocking out to the song.
The song’s official video itself acted as an origin story of sorts, showing the birth of two key characters in the Ghost universe, the Papa Nihil and the matriarchal Sister Imperator.
Dance Macabre gave Ghost their third US Mainstream Rock hit after Square Hammer and Rats. More importantly, it pointed the way to the more commercial path they’d follow on subsequent albums Impera and Skeletá.
“You have the ‘cream-of-the-crops’ in a way – like, the immediate songs,” Tobias told Slug Mag in 2019. “I think Dance Macabre is an immediate song and is a song that I will be playing for the rest of my life.”
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