Last week, Ghost debuted two new songs inspired by music from the 1960’s. Live from all the way across the pond in Bakersfield, California, Ghost performed both ‘Kiss the Go-Goat’ and ‘Mary on a Cross’ for the first time.
Ghost’s new tracks are the first time that the cult band has gone backwards in its lineage. Starting with Opus Eponymous as a ‘70s occult metal act, Ghost eventually made their way into the ‘80s with Prequelle. Though Cardinal Copia now sings ‘Kiss the Go-Goat’ and ‘Mary on a Cross’ live, Ghost’s YouTube series reveals Papa Nihil as the original singer for both tracks.
As footage reveals, the ever enigmatic Ghost performed ‘Mary on a Cross’ early on in their set, nestling it right in between ‘Faith’ and ‘Devil Church / Cirice,’ while saving ‘Kiss the Go-Goat’ for one of their final songs, placed between ‘Mummy Dust’ and ‘Dance Macabre.’ You can watch both performances below.
Ghost’s Tobias Forge recently spoke about the impact Alice Cooper and ’60s rock music had on the band. “What is shock-rock without Alice Cooper?” Forge begins. “I lack the proper words to fully explain how extremely vital he has been for the whole genre of rock and roll, really. But also speaking from a context where I guess we are also a theatrical shock-rock band, we wouldn’t have been here had it not been for Alice Cooper.”
No act has sat at the forefront of this ‘new-wave’ of sound in recent years more than Swedish “church of satan” pop-metallers Ghost.
The project of mastermind Tobias Forge, accompanied by his anonymous (for the better part when there are no lawsuits involved) ‘nameless ghouls’, the discography of Ghost is marked by a commitment to never repeating themselves, always fusing their metallic roots with elements of traditional rock, pop and even disco.
In one sense Ghost are a contradiction of sorts. Taking all the satanic, demonic, anti-religious imagery of Scandinavian metal and adding their own ‘dark Vatican’ flavour to it all, one would expect them to produce a sound more similar to Emperor or Dimmu Borgir.
