Ghost triumph at Swedish Grammis

(Image credit: Photo by Sergione Infuso/Corbis via Getty Images)

Ghost won the Best Hard Rock/Metal category at the Swedish Grammis for their album Impera.

Tobias Forge and co were honoured at the ceremony at Annexet in Stockholm on Wednesday (May 3).

Their fifth album Impera was up against Amon Amarth's The Great Heathen Army, Arch Enemy's Deceivers, The Halo Effect's Days Of The Lost and Watain's The Agony & Ecstasy Of Watain.

Accepting the award, Forge joked that he'd hoped to win it earlier in the night –before he'd had quite so many drinks.

He said: "For some reason I thought this would happen earlier in the evening. As you know, it takes a lot of teamwork to make a record, everything from getting the record together sonically to getting it out in physical form.

"I've worked with a lot of people and halfway through this evening, I realised, 'Fuck we haven't been mentioned yet, our category hasn't been mentioned! I'm gonna be way too drunk!'

"So I told Klas Åhlund, producer of our record, that if we win anything, we should get up here together because it would be difficult to remember everyone that's been part of it.

"So, some of the people who have helped us – Klas Åhlund, Salem Al Fakir, Vincent Pontare, Max Grahn, and a whole lot of other people. Everyone from Universal, Nicholas, Christian, BMG, Live Nation has been there and helped us so much. Thank you very much everyone who has been involved."

Last year, Impera was named Metal Hammer's Album of the Year in the annual critics' poll.

It was also a chart-topping success in the band's native Sweden – as well as Austria, Germany and Spain.

Impera also reached number 2 in both the UK and US. It had the highest US sales week for a rock record since Foo Fighters' 2021 release Medicine At Midnight.

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.