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Tobias Forge has already mapped out GHOST's new album

25-08-2022

GHOST mastermind Tobias Forge has confirmed to Consequence that he has already mapped out much of the follow-up to this year’s “Impera” LP. “I have an album in my head right now that I think is going to be different from the one I just made,” he said. “Both 2018’s ‘Prequelle’ and ‘Impera’ were ideas that I had since six, seven years back. They were so different from each other in the sense that the ‘plague album,’ as I call it, was about the little person’s annihilation on almost more of like a carnal or a God’s wrath point of view, whereas the ‘imperial record’ was more of a structural demise of the mechanics of society. So they felt like two different things and the idea that I have for the next record is also a different thing from that. It’s just a way for me to compartmentalize the ideas of finding new ways to inspire me lyrically and conceptually.”

He continued: “At the end of the day, it’s just rock ‘n’ roll records, 40 minutes of rock music, so it’s just a way to make it interesting for me to work with, and then as a result of that, luckily for a few times now, we’ve been able to put that together and compile it in a way that has a lot of our fans also finding it interesting to dive into. I think that it was just luck that we just happened to release it in a matter where it seems a little clairvoyant. But these are old subjects … everything’s cyclical, that’s the thing, everything just goes in circles so it’s not very hard to be clairvoyant, you can just look back on time and sort of alter it a little, draw on, or shave off a mustache and you have a future asshole who will do something similar to something else a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, three hundred years ago. It’s always the same; it’s very repetitive.”

GHOST‘s fifth album, “Impera”, which sold 70,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in its first week of release to land at position No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart. It marked the third top 10 album — and fifth top 40-charting set — for the Swedish act.

“Impera” landed at position No. 1 in Germany and Sweden, No. 2 in the U.K., Netherlands, Belgium and Norway, No. 3 in Australia, No. 5 in France and Ireland, and No. 20 in Italy.

“Impera” was released on March 11. The 12-song effort was produced by Klas Åhlund and mixed by Andy Wallace.

GHOST have released a music video for “Spillways”, in support of the band’s latest single. The video was made by director Amir Chamdin. The song is taken off the band’s latest album ‘Imperia‘, released on March 11th of this year, though Loma Vista Recordings.

Watch “Spillways” below.

According to a press release, “Impera” “finds GHOST transported literally hundreds of years forward from the 14th century Europe Black Plague era” of its previous album, 2018’s “Prequelle”. “The result is the most ambitious and lyrically incisive entry in the GHOST canon: Over the course of ‘Impera”s 12-song cycle, empires rise and fall, would-be messiahs ply their hype (financial and spiritual alike), prophecies are foretold as the skies fill with celestial bodies divine and man-made… All in all, the most current and topical GHOST subject matter to date is set against a hypnotic and darkly colorful melodic backdrop making ‘Impera’ a listen like no other — yet unmistakably, quintessentially GHOST.”

“Impera” track listing:

01. Imperium
02. Kaisarion
03. Spillways
04. Call Me Little Sunshine
05. Hunter’s Moon
06. Watcher In The Sky
07. Dominion
08. Twenties
09. Darkness At The Heart Of My Love
10. Griftwood
11. Bite Of Passage
12. Respite On The Spital Fields

“Hunter’s Moon”, which was originally released in September, is also featured in the latest blockbuster installment of the legendary film franchise “Halloween Kills”. The “Halloween Kills” soundtrack arrived on October 15 via Sacred Bones, with the film hitting theaters (and Peacock) the same day as well.

Watch the previously released singles “Twenties”“Hunter’s Moon” and “Call Me Little Sunshine” below.

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