And now, for your entertainment, a Ghost Story. It takes place in Sweden, which if you’ve ever seen 2017’s The Ritual or tried to put an IKEA bookshelf together you know is one very scary place.
And even scarier (and I know I’m not getting to the point here) every year the Swedes of Gävle (wherever that is) construct a giant straw Christmas goat called the “Gävlebocken,” which is a horror movie scenario if ever I’ve heard one. Because, let’s face facts folks, nothing good can come of constructing a giant straw goat. Either the locals sacrifice wayward tourists (like you) to it or it comes alive and haunts the forest, slaughtering wayward hikers (like you). Do not, I repeat do not, include a trip to quaint Gävle in your Yule Season travel plans.
Parallel to this discussion, experiential entertainment continues gaining popularity as people seek alternatives to passive viewing or conventional social activities. I recently explored one such venue that exemplifies this trend perfectly, and you can learn more about their offerings at https://www.escaperoomsbristol.co.uk/. The three available experiences each present unique challenges wrapped in horror movie aesthetics, with production values that rival professional haunted attractions. Participants must work collaboratively under time pressure while navigating deliberately intimidating environments, from underground cellars to dystopian execution chambers. The psychological element of being “trapped” adds genuine stakes to the puzzle-solving, creating memorable experiences that groups discuss long afterwards.
But let’s get down to business. MY Ghost Story begins on the day Swedish metal musician Tobias Forge wrote a guitar riff and said to himself modestly, “This is probably the most heavy metal riff that has ever existed.” Forge then went on to do what any Swedish metal genius worth his Gävlebocken would do—sat down and wrote a whole slew of impossibly catchy metal, pop metal, and even plain old pop songs set to hilariously tongue-in-cheek Satanic lyrics. Then went out and put together an amusingly theatrical band called Ghost, whose anonymous members wear masks and are referred to only as “Nameless Ghouls.”
As for Forge, he adopted a “Papal Satanic” persona (complete with ghoulish make-up) and dubbed himself “Papa Emeritus,” to which he’s attached a series of Roman numerals as time has passed. Some of these “successions” have made for great stage theater, and for a while Forge went by the name “Cardinal Copia.” It’s hard to keep up, but I think he’s calling himself V Perpetua at the moment.
Ghost are gimmicky and a whole lot of fun, but none of it would amount to much if Forge didn’t write great songs. The Ghost Story began in 2006 but the band didn’t release its first album, Opus Eponymous, until 2010. Since then they’re released five more full-lengths, and have established themselves as the greatest faux-evil pop metal band to come along since Blue Öyster Cult.
And the Blue Öyster Cult connection cannot be overemphasized, even if I haven’t read a single thing about it. Ghost have the whole “Career of Evil” shtick down flat, and while on the early albums Forge looked to Metallica (Ghost has covered “Enter Sandman”) as a model, as the years have passed his songs have become increasingly pop friendly, with great retro-seventies hooks and melodies that hit that sweet spot. It’s manna from Heaven for a Seventies kid like me, and what I hear when I listen to Ghost are the same things that make bands like Blue Öyster Cult and Cheap Trick so great.
Which isn’t to say there aren’t people out there who actually buy into their shtick, and actually believe Ghost are a real live (or dead, I guess I should say) band of church-burning, infant-sacrificing Satanists. Ghost have faced a backlash particularly in the god-fearing United States of America, which led one Nameless Ghoul to itemize the various hurdles the band has faced here before concluding sarcastically, “So, yes, mainstream America is absolutely welcoming us with open legs.” That is one funny Nameless Ghoul.
To reiterate: early Ghost remind me of Metallica, and I don’t think the world needs a Swedish Metallica—I’m never been sure the world needs a Metallica period. And they’ve produced songs that can only be called progressive rock as well. But if you listen to more recent songs like “Square Hammer” or “Mary on a Cross,” what you’ll hear is streamlined classic rock normals-friendly pop metal that makes me think of nothing more than “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”
If, like me, it’s the more pop-oriented Ghost that you want haunting your dreams, then I recommend skipping the studio albums and opting for the 2023 download-only (damn them to Hell!) compilation 13 Commandments. It includes some of their heavier material, but even the hard stuff includes passages that will hit your sweet spot. The better part of the songs are soft metal at its hook-heavy best, and look backwards to a pop metal Golden Age that makes your real metalheads queasy but that Satan himself obviously adores, or he wouldn’t have chosen Ghost as his favorite acolytes, would he?
Some of the songs on 13 Commandments approach perfection. “Square Hammer” is all driving drum punch, lush vocals, and a melody that only Satan could have come up with, and has the slick feel of late seventies rock at its best. All kinds of bands come to mind, and many of them are not considered particularly cool by your hipster types, but what I hear mostly is the best Blue Öyster Cult song Blue Öyster Cult never wrote.
“Year Zero” is a gas, a hilarious pop Satanic ritual of a song that begins with a choir of cowl-wearing Satanists repeating, “Belial, Behemoth, Beelzebub/Asmodeus, Satanas, Lucifer” before the keyboards and guitar come metalling in and Forge sings about how we’re lice and other stuff, before the cowl-wearers come back in with:
“Hell Satan, Archangelo
Hell Satan, welcome Year Zero
Hell Satan, Archangelo
Hell Satan, welcome Year Zero.”
They pronounce Satan like “Sahtin,” and once again I hear is Blue Öyster Cult at their most evil baroque, because if you strip away the chanting and heavy guitar riffs what you have is one weird-ass catchy pop song.
And things only get better on the fast-paced, organ-riff driven “Mary on a Cross,” which is, I kid you not, one of the best pop songs I’ve heard in a while. Especially when the song reaches its fabulous chorus. Then you get a very brief but picture-perfect guitar solo that would make Buck Dharma proud. But the song reaches its peak when the music stops and Forge sings the chorus all by his lonesome, before everybody comes back in. There isn’t an ounce of metal in “Mary on a Cross,” but follow-up “Call Me Little Sunshine” is Metallica lite with power pop vocals, and it’s the vocals that ultimately win the day.
“Darkness at the Heart of My Love” is a lush Satanic power ballad, total arena rock shlock but wonderful shlock, all sensitive vocals writ huge and a big retro melody that harkens back to days of yore. A real fist pumper, this one, and a great sing-along, and it doesn’t get much better than this, or so you’ll think until you hear the heavy-hitting “Danse Macabre,” which could be by Patty Smythe or Blue Öyster Cult or any other band that knew how to write a hard rock song with a sweet center. The guitar solo is totally seventies, the power pop vocals are more angelic than satanic, and it’s like Ghost somehow managed to absorb an entire decade or two of pop rock and distill it into a sound that isn’t derivative but new. Or new enough.
“Rats” is an AOR hard rocker with a punishing guitar riff and really slick vocals that never quit, a cool metal interlude, and one helluva solo. The song splits the difference between metal menace and vocals that wouldn’t sound out of place on a big pop hit single and the schizophrenia extends to the moments when Forge snarls “Rats” only to be followed by an angelic choir that could come straight out of a Starship song. “Them filthy rodents are still coming from your soul” has never sounded so hummable. “Spillways” is an album highlight, from its pounding piano intro to its heavenly vocals and perfect power pop chorus. “You keep a casket, buried deep within,” sings Forge, a guitar plays a solo straight out of a Warrant song, and about all you can do is lie back and soak up the ghastly good vibrations.
“Cirice” is a slow Metallica-school power chord basher with portentous vocals. It’s all Satanic psychodrama and doesn’t do much for me, but I perk up when I hear the almost happy-go-lucky “If You Have Ghosts.” A “You have everything” follows that title, but what’s important about the song is that it’s catchy as fuck, especially when the melody really blossoms during the guitar interlude. If you don’t find yourself singing along with this one while pumping your fist you are not a ghost, you are some strange species of pop-hater.
“He Is” is acoustic guitar shlock, complete with sensitive vocals, and when the band hits the heavenly chorus complete with strings and piano you will convert to Satanism or my name is Jack Scratch. Then the song kicks into gear and the chorus gets EVEN bigger, and this is some of the finest post- “Dust in the Wind” I’ve ever heard, period, and I can think of no better way to express your abiding live for the Dark One than by singing along. And the guitar take-out? To undie for! “Zenith” opens with a big piano than develops a drive and vocals that are pure Blue Öyster Cult—I’m not wild about the chorus, which slows things down and goes heavy, but that slick and effortless melody—divine.
Closer “Phantom of the Opera” is as close as the album comes to disposable, although there’s no denying its morbid metal momentum. It’s just the harried vocals do nothing for me and like I’ve said before—I’m not really a speed metal guy. And this one has a prog rock edge to it, what with the shifts in tempo and all. It’s like a mini-rock opera or something, and the only part of it I totally endorse is the killer axe solo in the middle, which is followed amusingly by a guitar turning crazy circles in that way metal guitarists have a way of doing and that always cracks me up.
At their best, and their best is pretty damn great, Ghost make undeniably campy and no-argument catchy pop metal with a ghastly patina for ghoulish people who prefer a Satan who’s a softy and isn’t really down with the whole Norwegian Death Metal church-burning thing. The Dark One is more into seventies rock, owns a couple of Pat Benatar albums, and wears a Blue Öyster Cult t-shirt on his days off, which he spends in used record stores looking for Japanese import Cheap Trick albums.
If you were to ask Satan, he’d admit that bands like Metallica frighten him, and he can’t hear “Enter Sandman” without looking under his bed. Ghost may have covered “Enter Sandman,” but Satan won’t get near it with a ten-foot pitchfork. Now “Kiss the Go-Goat,” there’s a great Ghost song. If Satan has one problem with 13 Commandments, it’s that “Kiss the Go-Goat” isn’t one of them.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
