By the end of 2024, Tobias Forge had nothing left. Facing burnout after years of heavy touring and the grinding double whammy of making and releasing a full movie and recording a brand new studio album, the Ghost mastermind found himself at the end of his rope.
“I hit a wall,” he admits today. “I realised I am not built to do that. I really can’t.”
It’s understandable that Tobias had started to feel the weight of it all. While on the face of it, last year put the perfect exclamation point on an immensely successful chapter in his career – that concert film, Rite Here Rite Now, received rave reviews, crystallising Ghost’s position as one of modern metal’s premier acts – it was also the moment that 15 years of carrying Ghost on his shoulders finally caught up with him.
“It was a lethal brew,” he explains. “I was doing the exact same thing that I’ve been doing ever since we finished our first album cycle: come home from touring on a Sunday, and on Wednesday, start recording because we already have the next tour planned. That’s how it’s been for 15 years.”
So, in October, promotional duties for Rite Here Rite Now wrapped up and Ghost’s next world tour officially announced, Tobias allowed himself a first. Instead of jumping straight into tour prep and polishing up his new record, he gave himself a couple of months off. What did he do with them?
“God, what did I do?!” he exhales. He suddenly looks lost for words – the first and only
time during our chat. After a while, he grins sheepishly: “Work my way away from panic attacks.”
If Tobias was reaching breaking point a few months ago, there’s no sign of it now. Today we’re in the bowels of The Mandrake, a luxurious and eccentrically decorated hotel nestled in the heart of Fitzrovia in central London. Atop the hotel bar sits a bizarre mounted hybrid of a creature that we can only describe as something between a peacock and an antelope (a peacalope?!), glowering over a menagerie of surrealist sculptures, retina-singeing art pieces and more fantastical fake taxidermy. It’s an oddly fitting environment for sharing time with an artist who has so deftly mixed the subversive with the glamorous, the camp with the bizarre.
We find Tobias sitting on a plush sofa in a nearby lounge. Looking relaxed but focused, he sips from a bottle of San Pellegrino, pausing thoughtfully before each answer, rarely breaking eye contact as he delivers them. Long, straggly hair hanging loose over his shoulders, fully bearded and rocking a black Sodom cut-off, he looks every inch the heavy metal lifer, a world away from the preening, sparkly master of ceremonies he embodies onstage.
We’re here to discuss Ghost’s next chapter – a new album, Skeletá, and a new leading man, Papa V Perpetua, the latest colourful character that Tobias will inhabit to bring his vision to life. Over a decade and a half, the Swede has overseen Ghost’s evolution from underground metal curio to all-singing, all-dancing rock opera extravaganza, 2022’s Impera scaling new heights of theatricality. That album was concerned with the rise and fall of empires, wrapping barbs directed at modern political regimes in irresistible hooks and 80s arena rock excess. This time, Tobias seems concerned with more existential ideas.
“I felt super-proud and pleased with Impera,” he says. “But it was quite heavy on external political influence, critique of social structure. There’s really nothing new to say about that. Fine. So what do I do? Well, instead of shining a light onto other things, I want to make more of an introspective, ‘basic core feelings’ record. That seems interesting! Writing a song that embodies hope, sorrow, regret, hate, love.”
This might surprise anyone who has superficially engaged with Ghost’s music thus far. On the surface, their shtick has remained endearingly simple: Satanism by way of The Rocky Horror Picture Show; blasphemy delivered with a nudge, a wink and a tap dance. As Tobias tells it, however, there’s always been more to it than that.
“With most of the things I’ve written, including parts of the first record [2010’s Opus Eponymous], there’s this misconception that they’re about the Devil, and they aren’t, really,” he insists. “They’ve always been about mankind’s relationship with the concept of life and death, and God and divine presence – or absence. Some songs are expressed with more specificity at a certain individual or a certain aspect of society. I just felt that I wanted this new record to be...” he pauses for a moment. “About being human. Being alive.”
While Tobias is adamant that Satan is only a peripheral presence in Ghost’s world, The Great Horned One is still shaking his booty all over Skeletá – the album’s lead single is literally called Satanized, for a start. Released last month, its video proved historic in officially unmasking the Nameless Ghouls. Its lyrics, however, are more to do with love and obsession than the actual Devil, and it’s not the only time Skeletá dishes out complex emotional beats.
Lachryma’s vampiric motifs reek of bitter broken hearts (‘I’m done crying / Over someone like you’); De Profundis Borealis seems to find our man trapped in cycles of regret (‘If only love could break these chains / Life could go on’); Cenotaph movingly explores how those that have passed on stay with us (‘Wherever I go / You’re always here / Riding next to me’); Excelsis finishes the album with a freeing embrace of our own mortality (‘Everybody leaves one day / I know it hurts / Everybody goes away’).
Musically, the album’s heart is vigorously rolled in the same 80s glitter as its predecessor. Tobias emphasises that he didn’t want to make an “Impera 2”, but from the anthemic, Journey-fied AOR of Peacefield to lighter-baiting power ballad Guiding Lights, to the ludicrous hair metal stomp of Missilia Amori, it’s clear this is an era of music he’s enjoying spending an extended stay in.
“I think it’s simply because that kind of music comes very naturally for me,” he shrugs. “However much on certain days I might want to be able to do other things, I just can’t sing like another singer. My type of vocals will always sound better if it’s multi-tracked with harmonies. That’s what I do! I’m not Till Lindemann.”
If this sounds like Ghost are running the risk of strutting into a creative cul-de-sac, don’t fret. Arena rock might fit Tobias like a sparkly glove, but he also firmly believes it provides the best environment in which to bring his visions to life.
“The first person you sell an idea to is yourself,” he says matter-of-factly. “I’m drawn to melody and drama, and that is just something that is very represented in the 70s and 80s, and especially within AOR and yacht rock. It’s just well played, well arranged, multi-stack vocals with a lot of drama.”
Of course, every new Ghost album means more than just new tunes. Like Alice Cooper, Kiss and Slipknot before them, the band’s image has been a foundational part of their allure, and with each release, it’s received a drastic makeover. Opus Eponymous was spearheaded by the mysterious Papa Emeritus I, a ghastly, Papal figure masked by corpsepaint and backed by faceless, hooded Nameless Ghouls. Since then, each new album has been accompanied by new-look Ghouls and an entirely new frontman – always played by Tobias, but given a whole new identity.
There was the gruesome Papa Emeritus II for 2013’s Infestissumam, the flamboyant Papa Emeritus III for 2015’s Meliora and the moustached and mischievous Cardinal Copia for 2018’s Prequelle. Tobias broke with tradition by keeping ‘Cardi C’ around for the Impera era, upgrading him to full Papa Emeritus status. Now, however, a new player has entered the chat: Papa V Perpetua, a metallic vision in purple, looking like a Satanic mash-up of Doctor Doom and Ivan Ooze. What’s his deal?
“I can’t really talk about him!” Tobias shoots back. At first, we assume this is a typical bit of Ghost cloak-and-daggery – Metal Hammer doesn’t even get to see what Perpetua
looks like until two minutes before the interview, as a photo is carefully removed from an envelope and handed to us by one of the band’s personnel. As it happens, Tobias isn’t being secretive. He genuinely doesn’t flesh out his lead characters until they’ve hit the stage and performed live in front of fans.
“I can’t give you a profiling, because the way things worked with Papa, I, II and III, and Cardi when he was new, was that he doesn’t exist until he’s one with the people, you know?”
This is a bit of a revelation. For someone who has maintained such meticulous control over Ghost’s IP since its formation, is leaving such a central part of the band’s mythos up to what is essentially live improv not a little daunting?
“It is. I’ve always felt that it was a scary thing,” Tobias admits. “On one hand, I’m trying to make the ‘product’ that is Ghost an entertaining thing for our fans. On the other, I try to do that as pleasantly as is possible for myself as well. When I decided to introduce Cardinal Copia into the mix, it felt very uncomfortable because he was going to be thrown out there as someone who hadn’t become [a Papa Emeritus] yet. ‘Wow, this is going to be a little different.’ But what I did know was that I didn’t have to go through the process of introducing a new character for the next album. Now, I do!”
Perpetua’s arrival also creates some fresh dramatic tension: Ghost now have two fictional figureheads on the scene. On recent tours, fans have been able to buy VIP tickets that have included the opportunity to come face to face with the ‘corpses’ of Papas I, II and III – characters who were all banished upon being replaced and, eventually, unceremoniously killed off. It seemed certain that Cardi C was destined for the same fate, recent entries into Ghost’s hilariously daft YouTube series and the plot of Rite Here Rite Now both pointing to his inevitable demise.
But Cardi is very much still here – in fact, according to Tobias, he hasn’t only stuck around, but moved up Ghost’s clerical ladder (“He believes that he has been demoted, whereas in essence, he’s actually been promoted”). Does our beloved Cardinal still have a big part to play in the Ghost story, or is Tobias just too fond of him to let go?
“All of the above,” he smiles, going on to explain Cardi’s enduring appeal. “He is very much a normal person, with family issues. But he is a person that craves a sense of purpose.”
We’re getting existential again. Is Tobias’s own journey through life influencing Ghost at this point?
“Most likely, yeah,” he says slowly, in the manner of a man that may have not considered this much. “Even though my background is not identical to Cardi’s, there are echoes of my own life within there. Sometimes it might be a mixture of my own experience and others that I know, and then you put it in a potpourri that’s more entertaining or understandable. But I think most creators will create from what they know, what they see, what they think and, maybe, what they want to be.”
One fascinating aspect of the Cardi/Perpetua dynamic is that it was heavily hinted in Rite Here Rite Now that the duo are, in fact, twins. Given Tobias himself is the father of twins – albeit a brother and sister rather than two boys – that can’t be a coincidence, right? So are Cardi and Perpetua twins?
They might be twins,” he poker-faces.
OK, it appears we’ve lifted the lid on about as much of the story as we can here. There is one other aspect of the Big Perpetua Reveal that we should acknowledge, though. His official confirmation didn’t come from a dramatic Ghost announcement, a surprise YouTube drop or some Skeletá album art. It came about halfway down the bill on the poster announcing this summer’s gargantuan Black Sabbath farewell show, in which dozens of the biggest names in metal history will unite for a historic concert at Villa Park.
Seconds after the internet exploded at the news that Sabbath, Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, Gojira, Alice In Chains and more would all be playing in one place on July 5, eagle-eyed Ghost fans spotted something surprising: the name Papa V Perpetua, squeezed in a few rows down between Mike Bordin and Rudy Sarzo. Surely that wasn’t part of Tobias’s grand plan?
Turns out it absolutely wasn’t. Rather, it was another rare instance in which he was happy to go with the flow and loosen his grip on the Ghost reins – just a little.
“We were asked to partake [in the Sabbath concert], and we couldn’t,” Tobias explains, pointing out that the band’s North American tour starts in the week following the show. “So it ended up being like, ‘OK, so we’ll just send our singer!’ That was agreed in a heartbeat, some time ago.”
Months later, Tobias was informed that Sabbath were ready to announce, and wanted to acknowledge that Ghost’s singer would be on the bill.
“‘What do we say?’” he recalls people asking him. Tobias’s response? “Well, his name is Papa V Perpetua. So write that!”
You can’t imagine there’d be many bands on planet Earth that Tobias would so readily mould his plans around, but if you’re gonna do it for anyone, the Godfathers of heavy metal are probably the right call. The Swede speaks warmly of Sabbath’s influence on him, and that influence is stamped over Skeletá as much as anything else he’s put his name to, though perhaps not in the way you might think.
“Geezer is very much to be credited for those hugely frail and very introspective lyrics,” he notes. “That has always been an inspiration for me, even though you sort of wrap it underneath big, muscular rock music.”
Sabbath mean something to just about every person on Planet Earth who has ever considered themselves a metalhead, but Ghost mean a hell of a lot to a fair old whack of people too - and their cult grows ever bigger and more impassioned. Go to any of their shows today and you’ll find yourself surrounded by euphoric devotees dressed in nun outfits, Ghoul attire, Papa Emeritus costumes and all manner of extravagant custom get-ups.
Ghost concerts aren’t just an opportunity to see Tobias’ vision come to life on the grand stage: they’re a safe space, a place where fans can escape their trials and tribulations and feel comfortable expressing themselves without fear of judgement. Does Tobias feel a sense of responsibility to those fans at this point?
“I do,” he replies. “As an entertainer, my job is to entertain people and make as many as possible feel happiness, or inspiration, or escapism. They get lost in this otherworldly thing.”
He’s quick to point out that there are always real, tangible messages underneath the music, be it the more politicised tangents of Impera or the existential soul-searching of Skeletá. He compares the band’s relationship with their fans to that of a friendship, with all the footnotes that may come with it.
“I don't believe that true friendship is lying and saying everything's just peachy,” he states. “I think that true friends are also able to to serve a slew of not-so-pleasant truth to each other. But as friends, I think it's your duty to try to encourage each other to handle whatever turmoil you are experiencing. What will make us resilient together? How do we survive?”
Ghost aren’t surviving: they’re thriving. This year will see them pack out more arenas around the world, continuing their reign as one of the most bizarre but brilliantly entertaining success stories in metal history. But it’s about more than all the fun and frolics; Tobias clearly cares deeply about his art and the things he has to say, however draped up, glitter-bombed and, well, SATANIZED they may be.
“Whatever you shit out on a canvas can be regarded as art, but art that people tend to enjoy is usually interpreting something real,” he muses. “I think your readers will agree that a lot of what we know about the world, we have learned through listening to music.”
A few months back, Tobias had nothing left. Now, it seems Ghost still have plenty more sermons to give.
Skeletá is out now via Loma Vista. Order an exclusive grey opaque vinyl variant via the official Metal Hammer store. Ghost's 2025 world tour is ongoing.
