It's a question that haunted pop metal fans for years: who is Ghost? Well, now we know — and let's just say he's no stranger to death...
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00:00It's a question that haunted pop metal fans for years.
00:03Who is Ghost?
00:04Well, now we know.
00:06And let's just say he's no stranger to death.
00:08Ghost was never like the other bands.
00:11Founded in 2006, this Swedish group is actually a one-man project of Tobias Forge, who's
00:16behind the music, the imagery, and the mass of the ever-changing Papa Emeritus frontman.
00:20A high-concept poppy metal project that flirts with satanic imagery, Ghost has met with great
00:25success.
00:26But the road to fame has been rocky.
00:28The project took several years of gestation between its founding and the release of its
00:31first album, Opus Eponymous, in 2011.
00:35Ghost's nature as a Forge-centric project has also been disputed by his onstage bandmates,
00:39who slapped him with a royalty lawsuit in 2017, outing their own identities in the process.
00:44This effectively forced Forge to publicly come out as Ghost's creator in an interview
00:48with Radio P1 Sverige.
00:50And that's just the band stuff.
00:52Forge's own life involved multiple false starts before he got his big break.
00:56In an interview with Metal Hammer, the musician detailed numerous unsuccessful bands he had
01:00played with over the years, as well as the deadbeat jobs he'd held.
01:03He said,
01:04At that point in 2009, I was at a point of desperation.
01:06I was one year into parenthood, facing the fact that we need more money.
01:10So I decided to do something.
01:12Much of this, of course, is fairly standard struggling musician stuff.
01:15But don't think for a second that Forge hasn't gone through his share of true tragedy as
01:19well.
01:20In his interview with Radio P1 Sverige, Forge reminisced about his unhappy youth.
01:23His father and mother were separated, and he didn't exactly gel with his father's
01:27new family, feeling like an unwanted outsider whenever he was with them.
01:30He said,
01:31I hated that I, every other weekend, was forced away.
01:34And it felt every time like being picked away from my own life, where I had full freedom
01:38to dream away.
01:39I was instead forced into their new world, where they have chosen each other, they loved
01:43each other.
01:44Young Forge already appreciated the Christian imagery he'd later play with in Ghost, but
01:48his stepmother was a genuinely religious and stern person who was known to invoke Christ
01:52while ordering him around.
01:53It didn't help that he also had a teacher cut from the same cloth.
01:57The dual attack of severity and religion left a mark on young Forge, who stopped seeing
02:01his father's family at the tender age of 10 and dropped out of school at 16.
02:05While Forge patched things up with his family in adulthood, his negative experiences as
02:09a child certainly played a factor in the spiritual direction he ended up picking for himself.
02:13He said,
02:14The devil became my companion.
02:16We went unconditionally hand-in-hand throughout my puberty and teenage years.
02:20He was exactly the pointed finger in the air I needed when I was the most angry.
02:29Meanwhile, in his Metal Hammer interview, the musician recounted the awful situation
02:33surrounding the first time Ghost received notable attention.
02:36In 2010, several of the songs that would later be released on Ghost's first album made waves
02:40online, and Forge had decided to fully commit himself to the project.
02:44The Ghost train was about to leave the station, but a shocking tragedy got in the way.
02:48It was the unexpected death of Forge's older brother on March 12, 2010.
02:52Forge's brother died after midnight without warning due to a heart ailment no one knew
02:56about.
02:57Thirteen years older than Forge, he was the person who had introduced the future Ghost
03:00superstar to rock music in the first place.
03:03The news arrived just after Forge had realized that the Ghost songs he'd uploaded to Myspace
03:07were going viral, and he received a record deal soon after.
03:10The cruel irony of the situation wasn't lost on Forge, who remains driven by his loss.
03:15As he said,
03:16It felt like some weird trade.
03:18The band for my brother.
03:19It was like, this has happened.
03:21There's nothing I can do with it.
03:22I've just gotta take the ball and run with it.
03:24And I've been running with it ever since.