GHOST frontman Tobias Forge joins host Abe Kanan for a special Audacy Check In, amid the highly-anticipated arrival of the mysterious Swedish metal band's all new 'Skeletá' era with new music, a new ‘Papa,’ and more.
Over the weekend GHOST shared images of an epic billboard announcing “V is coming,” along with a link to a livestream which will no doubt host the debut of the band’s “new” singer, Papa V Perpetua, as well as further new music announcements. Papa V, the next incarnation of frontman Tobias Forge, was first teased when revealed as part of Black Sabbath’s 'Back To The Beginning' July concert in Birmingham happening later this year.
For the past 20+ years, Tobias has led his “nameless ghouls” in GHOST, one of the more mysterious groups in the Metal scene, as their anti-Papal singer and principal songwriter.
Looking back on the group’s constant battles with remaining unknown players when first starting out, it was “fatigue,” Forge says, that eventually led to his unmasking. “It was a constant struggle to maintain anonymity, meanwhile trying to break and make the band bigger because it sort of defies the whole idea of becoming a bigger and more famous band, and not become more a person of interest,” he explains. “However, as I transgressed from, I know that might be the wrong word to use here, but transgressed from wanting to really remain anonymous, no matter what, to being, I guess, more open with it.”
“I tried to weigh whether or not if there was a playing field for me, to where I could do both,” Tobias says. “And what I understood it was that GHOST as an entity, as this sort of fictional, cartoonish Rock band, is always -- as long as I continue doing that the way I should -- will always be more known and more recognizable and more interesting than I am as a person. And so far, it has really been like that. Sure, people know who I am, but nowhere near as many as know what GHOST is.”
“Any time we have a new person in the band,” Forge admits, “I think it always sets off the sleuths trying to sort of figure out who that person is, and over the years we've had people in the band who've been very good at hiding their identities, basically enjoying the idea of being somewhat more elusive. And then there are those who prefer to be a little bit more visible.”
However, as he sees it “Neither is wrong. I think in the spirit of GHOST being a slightly more theatrical, and a little bit more anonymous, whatever that means now in this context, I think it's good if we don't go up on stage and take the mask off, ‘Here we are, it's me.’ You know, that's not great, but I mean it doesn't bother me if you know the name of the guitar player.”
Speaking of the band’s brand new single “Satanized” from their forthcoming 2025 album 'Skeletá,' some fans may notice a throwback feel to earlier releases, some of course may not. “I am bad at deciphering or deciding that,” Tobias says, “because if I say, ‘oh yeah, yes, you're right,’ there will be opinionated people listening like, it sounds nothing like Opus… So, no, it's not a carbon copy of ‘Opus Eponymous,’ it's not ‘Infestissumam,’ it's not ‘Meliora.’”
“There are elements of everything I've ever done, scattered all over the records, as is with this record too,” he says. “I always go into the studio or into the writing process, the production process, with the idea of trying to write a new album, an album that sounds in a new way, and then pragmatically, I guess you try to be professional and steer the ship. So it resembles a GHOST record. Even though I'm also struggling at times with exactly what that means, but you know, of course I have a gut feeling of which lines you don't cross, and where it feels like that is ‘not a GHOST thing to do.’ Not because I don't dare -- I consider myself fairly daring in my will to push everything forward, or push the envelope and or do things that others might not wanna do. But of ...
