Article By: Pat ‘Riot’ Whitaker ‡ Edited By: Leanne Ridgeway
The details of the new GHOST album have arrived, they include the album title, cover artwork, tracklist, and an official video for one of its songs.
The album, titled ‘Prequelle‘, will be released on June 1st via Loma Vista Recordings. The disc was recorded last year at Artery Studios in Stockholm with producer Tom Dalgety (Opeth, Royal Blood), and was mixed in January at Westlake Studios in West Hollywood, California with Andy Wallace (Nirvana, Faith No More, Slayer).
The official video for the disc’s first single, “Rats“, can be seen below. The clip was directed by Roboshobo (a.k.a. Robert Schober), who has previously worked with Metallica, Mastodon, and Alice In Chains, among others.
Like anything new, and continuing the GHOST tradition of an evolving band figurehead, ‘Prequelle‘ marks the introduction of GHOST‘s new leader, Cardinal Copia (aka Tobias Forge). He made his live debut with the band on April 6th, at a private, three-song acoustic performance in Chicago. Forge’s new alter ego will play his first full live show with GHOST on May 5th, as the Swedish band kicks off a run of North American dates in Riverside, California.
Forge recently spoke to Revolver and offered the following about the new album:
“It is loosely themed around the concept of death and doom. It’s a themed album around medieval times, but it’s definitely clinging onto a lot of very current things. The Black Death [plague] is a great example of a turning point for a whole civilization. Complete villages were annihilated. Most people knew very little, so all of it was God or the Devil — and about their faith being questioned: Why are we being stricken down by this great scourge? It must be because of our not fearing God enough and all this superstitious bullshit.
“There’s a lot that you would recognize today in online mannerisms,” he continued. “In many ways, we’ve gone back a few steps because now it’s closer to how it was back in the old days when people were standing at the square and all of a sudden, it’s like in Monty Python’s ‘Life Of Brian’: ‘Stone him! Ra! Ra! Ra!’ Public trials are very unsupervised and extremely swift and speak to the most primordial parts of us.“
In another interview, he expounded further, saying:
“It’s a very bright-sounding record. And it’s a very heavy record, I’d say, but not from a Metal Hammer point of view, meaning all metal through and through. But it’s a heavy record with a heavy theme. I think the overall ambiance is very serious.
“Technically, a GHOST song could just be piano and vocals but it could also be full pounding, heavy-thrashing hard rock,” he added. “I’m not in any way comparing us to them but I guess our modus operandi is a little like what QUEEN did — just decide to play really good songs and not focus too much on sticking to a recipe.”
‘Prequelle’ pre-orders are currently available HERE.
Tracklist:
01. Ashes
02. Rats
03. Faith
04. See The Light
05. Miasma
06. Dance Macabre
07. Pro Memoria
08. Witch Image
09. Helvetesfonster
10. Life Eternal
11. It’s A Sin [Pet Shop Boys cover] [Deluxe Edition bonus]
12. Avalanche [Leonard Cohen cover] [Deluxe Edition bonus]
