This is How You Land a Gig as One of Ghost’s Nameless Ghouls

Being a Nameless Ghoul in Ghost ain’t easy. For starters, you’ve got to put all ego aside; not only will you be barred from contributing to the writing process, but you’ve gotta play in a friggin’ mask and keep your true identity hidden from the public. No accolades whatsoever for you! Ghost is the Tobias Forge show, simple as that, and everyone else in the band is a distant (but equal) second.

But you’ve gotta have the musical chops too, and Forge has some very specific requirements for what he looks for in band members. Here’s what he told The Albuquerque Journal in a recent interview:

“You need to have certain metal chops. If you are a guitar player in this band, it’s very old-school, it’s very much old rock style.

“I am an old-school guitar player. I’m not an ’80s-’90s sort of shredder who plays a million notes a minute. I am way more ’60s-’70s kind of style, and I write very ’60s-’70s.

“If you come in like a typical modern drummer who is used to playing only with tricks and double kick and, like, big, big, big, fast rolls but you can’t play a swinging shuffle, then you can’t play in Ghost whatsoever.

“You need to have spent your time from playing Top 40 pop-rock in order to know how to play a song like ‘Ritual,’ a song like ‘Absolution’ or ‘Idolatrine.’ You need to know your classic drumming and your classic guitar.

“You can’t have people in the band who like only metal, either, but if you don’t know metal, you can’t play Ghost anyway because there are elements in my guitar playing that are very, very, very based on me having played death metal, like ’80s death metal, so you would have to play a Slayer riff as well.

“You need to be sort of equally familiar with Jimi Hendrix and Deep Purple as you are with the more extreme forms of metal, generally. So it’s not for everyone.”

Now that you know what Forge is after, best get to practicing ASAP — a Nameless Ghoul slot could open up at any time!

[via Ultimate Guitar]