GHOST with BLOOD CEREMONY and ANCIENT VVISDOM at the Virgin Mobile Mod Club (722 College), Sunday (January 22), doors 7 pm. $15, all ages. RT, TM. See listing.
What happens when a band is so determined to keep the music front and centre that its individual members refuse to identify themselves? They end up answering more questions about their anonymity than they do about their music, of course.
And at length. When I reach one of Ghost’s guitar-playing “nameless ghouls” over the phone in the melodic metal band’s hometown of Linköping, Sweden, we spend over half our allotted time talking about it.
“The whole purpose of the band was to be something more than a band,” he explains slowly and carefully. “We wanted it to be theatrical and an experience. And in order to create what we wanted, we had to be faceless. Not to add too much individualism into it. In order for the whole experience to be believable, you need not know who’s there.
“Even though we have a physical, individual lead singer” – the frightening cardinal-outfitted Papa Emeritus, whose soaring vocals and satanic lyrics bring to mind King Diamond – “he’s still fictional, sort of. That’s the kind of confusion we wish for this entity we call Ghost. We want everything to be confusion.”
What we do know is that Ghost includes two guitarists, a bassist, a drummer and a keyboardist in addition to Emeritus. They wear hooded robes and skull masks onstage, and play the most sonically rich and gorgeous classic metal I’ve heard in a long time. Their full-length debut, Opus Eponymous (Rise Above/Metal Blade), came out in North America early last year and got nominated for, among other awards, Sweden’s Grammy equivalent. (Of course, they didn’t go to the ceremony.)
So what is the band trying to achieve musically?
“This is another place where it gets confusing. We never set out to be a metal band per se. And we really, really don’t want to be regarded as a retro band. However, we do want to sound basically like a band that accidentally made a heavy metal record in 1978.”
He laughs, relishing his obfuscation.
“When bands say they’re influenced by Black Sabbath, especially stoner bands, they usually mimic Symptom Of The Universe and Children Of The Grave, songs that are the most heavy metal. But we wanted to be more like Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, which is actually a really soft album. Really mature, with lots of orchestration and synthesizer.
“We want to create our music in kind of a pre-metal context. We want to feel boundary-less, limitless.”
Interview Clip
A nameless ghoul talks about how the decision to be an anonymous band has, in some ways, backfired.
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