“When I was younger I was obsessed with becoming a celebrity,” Tobias Forge admits. “It came with the trade I wanted to be in – a successful musician.”
A surprising admission, perhaps, for a man who has built his success fronting Swedish theatrical hard rockers Ghost while wearing a succession of ornate masks, his face obscured, accompanied by a band referred to as Nameless Ghouls. His true identity was revealed officially only in 2017, and not by choice, after former ghouls broke ranks to complain about more earthly matters such as financial remuneration.
Now, although this bearded 44-year-old has regularly been seen out of costume talking about his work (usually in a death-metal T-shirt and jeans, although choosing not to go on camera for our video call – old habits die hard), he maintains a relatively low profile, even at home in Stockholm.
“I’m kind of a D-level celebrity in Sweden,” he says. “Which is completely fine. On the street where I live there are real famous people, from TV and Hollywood movies, and I don’t envy their level of attention.”
That may get increasingly difficult to contain if Ghost’s fan base continues to grow at its current pace. As we speak they’re at the start of a 55-date world tour, which has already taken in UK arena dates, the year after their own concert film, Rite Here Right Now, captured their spectacular live show from their 2023 tour. Judging by some of the titanic tunes that grace new album Skeletá, they’ll soon be converting yet more impressionable young rock fans to the diabolical cause.
That’s ‘diabolical’ in the traditional sense, because from day one Ghost have pinned their philosophical and aesthetic colours to an anti-Christian mast, as first single and album highlight Satanized reflects once more. The promotional video for that song shows a clergyman in a confession box pouring out his admission of demonic possession to a priest, with nuns and monks also gripped by presumably supernatural powers to play along to the song on medieval instruments.
Towards the end of the clip, the hapless cleric turns into Ghost’s new front persona, Papa V Perpetua, the latest in the lineage of mysterious leaders around which the band’s mythos has been built.
So when we watch Ghost, are we basically watching a piece of musical theatre, or a rock band? Or both?
“It’s a theatrical rock band, but it’s not a play,” says Forge. “We’ve really put a lot of effort into telling the story around the band, and creating the stage sets, the costumes, the light show, the pyros, because that’s easily directed. But when we go on stage there’s part of it that’s just like a traditional band, based on the vibe in the room. So there still is this element of spontaneity when we play live, to maintain the excitement you want from a rock show.”
All good showbiz fun, then, and anyone who has seen the band live can attest that they deliver handsomely in terms of on-stage spectacle. The bigger Ghost get, though, particularly in the notoriously satanic-panic-prone America, the more scrutiny there is likely to be over just what brand of Beelzebub-bothering they are trying to sell to the God-fearing youth of the world.
And that’s where it’s hard to pin Forge down, in terms of quite what variety of occultism he subscribes to. He has explained in the past that he embraced Satanism as a teenager by way of rebelling against strict teachers and an oppressively Christian, conservative stepmother, as well as a means of finding his tribe among the rock fraternity. But then it lent itself to the world he began creating with Ghost in 2006.
“The first Ghost record was written with no commercial aspirations whatsoever,” he says. “It was just like an art project for me, and the satanic imagery was kind of a homage to my origins in the underground death metal/black metal scenes, where all that stuff is omnipresent.
"For me it was a very natural way of writing and a source of strong imagery to use. But then with the second album, I had a sense that this might be the train I’d been waiting for, so that made me sharpen my senses, and I figured: ‘Well if people are listening, I might as well say something worthwhile’.
“I still believe that devilish imagery is a very effective way of telling a story,” he continues, “especially in this day and age where there’s this political force in the world that proclaims being on the good side, but where I come from it seems closer to the dark.
"What I stand for is probably closer to Jesus, to humanism, and progress, and a positive approach to how you treat people, than the supposed ‘good side’ are, because they want to destroy those things. They are the closest thing now to fucking Damien Thorn [the antichrist character in the Omen films]. Isn’t that fucking ironic?”
So is Satanism, to Forge, essentially a rebellion against the Christian right and the kind of forces that helped get Donald Trump into power?
“Yeah,” he says. “I think the shocker for us was that we thought that in the western world we were striving towards a more secular, free world. Then you find yourself surrounded by people who secretly wanted a more simple way of seeing things. Understanding the world is difficult, and it’s easy to become a zealot, and to succumb to a dictatorship, where if you just do these simple things and listen to the leader, life will be easier. And that’s what linear religion has done to the world. So who is the real dark force?”
At the same time, though, he doesn’t believe that all is lost.
“I still have this utopian idea of where the western world is going, which I still believe in. I still think that what’s going on right now is just a bump in the road.”
Has he ever felt any supernatural force around him during his career? Ever felt he’s dicing with spiritual danger? It seems not, as he prefers to talk in more oblique terms.
“I do believe that there is a force in the universe,” he says, “that you can be aware of or tapped into, but that force is not good or bad per se, it’s progressive… On the other hand there will always be someone who feels like: ‘I don’t like this progressive movement at all, because I’m not making money out of it and I feel like my life is worthless because of it.’ So I do believe that there is a force forward for humanity.
“The opposite of that is basically people being robbed of faith – belief in themselves and their own ability and their own right to control their own lives.”
It’s fair to say that Ghost’s style of music isn’t the variety of rock music most often associated with the occult. But as Forge explains, his natural tendency as a songwriter is to lean towards a more immediate, melodic style.
“Even if you listen to my old death metal band, it’s pretty al dente music, but I still tried to make it as catchy as I could. I don’t want to make just a background sound that you can sit and meditate to, I want to tell you something, I want to make you feel something. I think it’s a natural progression that you try to be more and more effective in your writing.
“There’s this misconception,” he adds, “especially in indie rock, that people don’t want to look good, and they don’t want to be liked. You think that My Bloody Valentine didn’t want to be successful? Of course they did! Did they want to become U2? Probably not. But they wanted to be just as effective in affecting people with their music. So it’s a natural thing for me. If that means selling more records or getting more streams, then great.”
For all the references to the dark side of the traditional spiritual spectrum, Forge insists that on Skeletá in particular, he has positive messages to impart. Opening track Peacefield, for example, offers air-punching sentiments of defiance as it celebrates ‘the end of our monarchy, a state machine’. It assures listeners: ‘This is what dreams are made of, this is what they’re afraid of/ A rhyme with no reason… When they finally reach you, you will have seen through/That dark is the season.’
“I wanted to write a song that was going to instil hope,” he says, “and as a reminder that just because it’s night now, doesn’t mean that there won’t be a tomorrow. On another part of the record I compare it to winter.”
That would be De Profundis Borealis (he does like his Latin titles), where he sings: ‘Every time you feel the wind blow and a glow within you dies, when tomorrow comes you will know that the morning thaws the ice’. For Forge this reflects a sense of optimism, which can also be found in community, as suggested on Cenotaph in which he sings: ‘Wherever I go, you’re always there, riding next to me’.
Even if you could apply these words to any number of situations – agit-punk this is not – it’s the kind of rock music that sees itself as a source of solace for people in troubled times. Forge sees Ghost very much in that mould, whether his fan base buy into the theatrics, the anti-religious humanism or just the rush of a singalong chorus.
“There is a large portion of our fan base that have experienced isolation,” he says. “I’ve heard a lot of sentiments about the joy of having found a social network through fandom, and that gladdens me a lot.”
With a predominantly young male fan base, he also feels Ghost is a positive force to steer people away from more destructive ideologies.
“There are men who are kind of compasslessly cartwheeling in the void of how to be, and when there seems to be this incel mindset that people are being drawn towards, that probably comes from social disorientation and not knowing how to be a man, or even a human in this day and age. That’s a huge problem and I hope that being part of a positive fan community can help address that.”
Forge’s ambitions for Ghost are still growing, as he explains of the current tour: “With the film, I think that was sort of a bookend of what we were up until that point. So my job here is to reinvent Ghost in a newer, better, bigger thing that will take us onwards and upwards.”
In perpetua, if you will.
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