Tobias Forge, our ghostly lord, has revealed that Ghost will begin working on the follow-up to 2018’s album Prequelle in January of next year. The plans are already laid out and set, and the mastermind himself has declared he has “maybe 50 ideas” for songs waiting in the wings.
“I’m still yet to start the real process,” Forge told Guitar World in a recent interview. He reaffirmed that the “real process” starts up in January, noting his work schedule is a strict Monday through Friday routine.
“I’ve only recorded, so far, a demo of one track, just to get my rocks off and feel that I’ve started doing something,” he explained of the progress thus far. “So one track is sort of listenable and then I have maybe 50 ideas for tracks, but generally, in order to make a song, you need about three ideas to be put together into a song,” he went on, looking ahead when he said, “So I feel that four months from now, [there will be a] pile of ideas — riffs, vignettes, lyric ideas, and all these different things.”
For Forge, the writing process for a song can begin anywhere as he noted that the Meliora track ‘From the Pinnacle to the Pit’ was conceived on bass, while ‘Death Knell’ off his Opus Eponymous Ghost debut began with a simple drum idea.
“But now, knowing that I have one song I can listen to and the pile of ideas, I feel very confident that [I can get a new album done] from January to September [of next year], expressed a confident Forge. “That’s the production window,” he clarified, outlining, “January is starting and September is mastering, basically. I feel as prepared now as I have going in to make any of the previous albums.”
Forge also confirmed that Ghost’s two “newest” songs ‘Kiss the Go-Goat’ and ‘Mary on a Cross’ (they are, as the story goes, actually 50-year-old songs from when Papa Nihil was singing for the band) are not indicative of the sonic direction the group will embark on next.
