Metal Hammer is proud to present a brand-new bookazine detailing the entire history of Ghost.
Bundled with six exclusive gifts, including art cards and a crucifix patch that you won’t find anywhere else, this 132-page special goes in-depth into every era of the Swedish hard rock/heavy metal juggernaut. There are retrospectives on every album, from 2010 debut Opus Eponymous to this year’s Skeletá, as well as the interviews we’ve done with singer/mastermind Tobias Forge across the past 15 years. If you’re a Ghost fan, the access doesn’t get more intimate and the history doesn’t get more comprehensive than this!
“I think people need to understand that my albums are never conceptual in the way that King Diamond’s are,” Tobias says in the bookazine, talking during the Impera days in 2022. “It’s never a story that starts in the beginning and finishes at the end of the story. It’s not a rock opera.
“To compare it to other artists, it’s more like Iron Maiden’s concept albums – like a record that loosely dabbles with the concept of pharaohs or time. On Powerslave, there are other songs that aren’t technically about pharaohs. Or like on Somewhere In Time, the songs have a chronological element in them. Impera is similar, where the songs are shining a light on various things within an empire. I guess you could say they show the cracks inside of it.”
The special also features our rare audience with Tobias in his Papa Emeritus II persona back in 2013, on the cusp of the release of second album Infestissumam.
“The new album is foremost about the presence of the Devil,” Papa II told us. “It deals with the relationship that the individual has with the presence of darkness, and what we identify as the Devil. It deals with real issues.”
Read all the interviews and all the retrospectives only in the new bundle, available through Magazines Direct.
(Image credit: Future)