The Highlights From Ghost’s Reddit AMA
Satan bless Metal Injection for sifting through yesterday’s Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) with Ghost to cull some of the most fascinating questions and answers so we didn’t have to do it ourselves. Was Papa Emeritus actually sitting behind a keyboard somewhere? Were Papa and the Nameless Ghouls all together? Was it just some marketing intern at Universal? Who knows? Whatever the case, the answers were incredibly informative for a band that’s so routinely shrouded in mystery. The band even displays some rare levity with regards to their ginormous cash album advance.
Here are some of the highlights:
With the large amount of people you all must work with, how difficult has it been to try to maintain anonymity?
We hand out a lot of bribes. Where do you think that whole advance went?
The new album seems slightly more… ‘happy’ than Opus does. Was this intentional (to reach a broader audience), or merely a natural progression?
It was a natural move on this album, but we might go in a different direction next time.
Do you have any funny stories about your anonymity causing misunderstandings or confusion? For example: is it hard for the nameless ghouls to recognise each other when in-costume? How do you deal with that?
After 120+ shows together we’ve gotten to recognize whatever little body language there is.. Several of us were friends before the band, so we knew eachothers’ individual moving patterns. But we have some funny stories about how we have miscommunicated on stage.. Especially when we might have a new or stand-in crew member, not used to the lack of normal gestures that goes on onstage.
Did the concept for the band exist before any of the songs were written or was it tailored to compliment the music?
The concept came to shape pretty early after the first songs came together. The material spoke in overtly satanic manner, painting a picture of the theatrical concepts of what was to become Ghost.
Are you thinking of releasing a live-DVD?
During this tour cycle we hope to have the opportunity to shoot one proper. It needs to be done after a few legs, when the show is really fine-tuned, playing preferably two nights at the same place. And all that jazz.. Needs to look and sound amazing..
After streaming Infestissuman in its fullest a few times, I realized it sound much “less metal” than Opus Eponymous and a little more like the 70’s psychedelic rock, which is awesome too. My question is, was this change of sound something intentional or did it just came naturally in the studio?
The idea of Ghost, musically, has always been to be playful and not be too conscious about what genre this or that riff would be from. Of course there are some dos or don’ts, but we try to be open minded. This modus operandi was the same on the two albums, but I think that “getting away” with a lot of the shit we pulled (from a metal underground mind set) on the first album, gave us the courage to take it one step further on the new one.
Infestissumam came out yesterday. Stream it below in full via Spotify:
