SPIRIT OF DOOM

Swedish metal band Ghost explores dark themes in theatrical shows

Ghost is continually writing and has new music always in the works. “I usually write a lot,” Nameless Ghoul said. “I don’t make an album and don’t write for two years and then end up with a blank paper starting over.”

The band’s next album, tentatively planned for release this time next year, has a darker theme than its previous album “Meliora,” released in 2015.

“Having in mind that the previous record was about the absence of God or the absence of deities, this new one is going to be about the return of God,” Nameless Ghoul said. “You know God’s wrath cast upon the suffering humans, so it will be a little bit more biblical in that sense, which in turn makes it darker, a little bit more apocalyptic, I think. That’s basically what I can tell you about it right now.”

Music for the new album has been in the works for a few years.

“I constantly work with material that could be 2 years old, 5 years old, 10 years old, as well as new things,” Nameless Ghoul said. “It’s a pick and mix of a lot of different ideas and stuff laying around, a lot of new stuff being added to the pile. Yeah, it’s a constant thinking ahead, and now, already now, I’m thinking about album No. 5, because there are songs coming out now or coming up being written that I feel like that won’t fit into the new album, so I’ll put that one onto the next one instead.”

Ghost is enjoying praise for its EP “Popestar,” which features five songs, including “Square Hammer,” which has garnered a lot of attention. The song is a good opener for Ghost’s live shows, according to Nameless Ghoul. Ghost has a shorter set as supporting act for Iron Maiden but it will still have the theatrics that Ghost is known for.

“Obviously, it’s very theatrical,” Nameless Ghoul said. “On our support shows like these, we tend to go for the more immediate material. But I think we’ve managed to jam in as much as we could in 45 minutes to sort of illustrate what we are about.”