Eddie

The second ever CD I bought was from Ghost. As a young metal enjoyer and having never heard of them before, the artwork (disseminated throughout this article), is what drew me to CD. At that time, I had very little knowledge of metal as neither my father, friends, and family in general was involved in the scene and you could definitely not expect to hear anything metal related on the radio or through mainstream media, especially in France. And although online forums existed, the most popular ones were english which I didn't speak at the time. In retrospect, I think it was for the better as it allowed me to form my own, admittedly sometimes weird, music taste.

The ritual I developed due to the aforementioned was the following: go to the metal section of the “Espace Culturel” (big french store with comics, CDs movies, books...) peruse until an album art, band name or album title caught my eye, google the reviews of that particular album and check was subgenre it was. If the ratings were satisfactory, and after comparing a couple of them, I would buy a single one with my allowance. This would not be a regular thing: CDs did cost a lot and I lived far from the Espace Culturel. I would then rip the CD onto my phone and listen to it in one sitting when I had the time. This ritual led me to some amazing discoveries that I immediately fell in love with, others that were more of a slow burner but that definitely shaped my music taste and expanded my horizons, but also catastrophic and regrettable wastes of money (I'm looking at you Battles from In Flames). Ghost's third album Meliora falls in that first category. And deviating from the ritual, I started listening to it on the 30min ride home, mind you my whole family except my father, which might have been the most receptive to the album, was in the car. Needless to say, they were not impressed. I was though, and the car ride not being long enough to listen to the full album, I rushed into my bedroom to finish it, starting of course not where I/we left off, but from the beginning. I was hooked and I had to listen to more. It goes without saying that on the next outing at l'Espace Cuturel, I picked up Ghost's second album (their first wasn't available), without even looking at anything else. That was in 2015, those two albums lasted me until Popestar came out, an EP, released at the end of 2016. Although a very big departure from the two albums I had listened to countless times, I still enjoyed its more fun and pop atmosphere.

However, things seemed to take a turn with their fourth album, Prequelle. I stumbled upon it literally the day of release in 2018 and obviously grabbed it. But this time I didn't immediately love it front to back. The latter half of it (actually just tracks 6, 7 and 8) was not really to my liking, initially, but also after many listens. I didn't really think much of it at the time, and I continued to survive off of those four albums, skipping the end of the fourth one. Things kept turning as when I listened to Impera, their fifth album, when it was released in March last year, I liked none of it.

What happened, why does this blog post exist, and why this title? For the latter question, the answer is simply I like dramatization. As for the second, apart from the fact that my fiancée refused to hear any more rambling from me on that subject, is that I finally have an outlet for all that pent-up rambling. And as for the first question, let's first see what Ghost is.

Ghost is a Swedish “doom” metal band (their specific style is pretty hard to pin down, hence the quotes), whose whole spiel is being a religious ministry controlled by a satanic clergy. Their names are never divulgated, and all members wear masks on stage. The band is composed of The Nameless Ghouls that are led by a Pope-like figure, which changes for each period (which can last one or more albums). Under the masks, the band members change all the time and only the Popes/singer (Papa Emeritus I through IV) remain the same person, who is the creator of the band and most songs (lyrics and instrumentals), while the Nameless Ghouls are the performers. There is a decent amount of lore for the band and each album has its own story surrounding it. They have produced five “sacred psalms” (albums), three “minor psalms” (extended plays) and one “ceremonic ritual” (live recording). Each album has its theme, the first album foreshadows impending doom, and at the end of it the Anti-Christ is born, the second album is about the presence of the Anti-Christ and the Devil on Earth and how men deal with it. The third album is about how God is abandoning men and leaving them without guidance and help, and what fills that void. The Plague is the main theme of the fourth album along with human's mortality and survival. There is no official lore for their last album, but it could be seen as the rise of a golden age after the desolation of the Plague. Fun stuff! As you can gather from this, Ghost has been a fairly underground band when it comes to mainstream attention outside of the metal scene. Within that scene I would say it is now a fairly well-known band. Their music however was never really tailored to appeal to the average metal fan, if such a thing exists, and a pretty significant portion of the more gatekeeping part of the metal community spits on anyone that calls them metal. It is in part for that reason they are not super mainstream even in the metal community, but also because their music focused more on the melodic aspect of songs, and on the voice of the singer, which is usually not a bit focus in metal. So their target audience was understandably never the mainstream audiences, even the metal mainstream audiences.

It now seems appropriate to take a look at their music, going through each of their albums, and some EPs one by one in chronological order, to understand the shift in the target audience. We won't take a look at each of the tracks individually, but rather flow through the album, pointing out the vibe and also noteworthy things along the way.

• Opus Eponymus This is Ghost's first album, and before doing research for this blog post I did not remember why it wasn't in my Ghost album rotation although I had listened to it previously. Well, actually sitting down and listening to it shines a light on that (unconscious?) decision. I will walk you through my thoughts when I listened to the album. It begins with a one-minute-long intro, played only on an organ, seemingly setting the tone for the album. Very dark, slow and atmospheric, my hopes were high. The second track opens with a short intro on the bass, being actually audible, which is a rarity if you a familiar with metal. However, as soon as the rest of the instruments join, all hell breaks loose. The reason for the bass being audible wasn't good mixing, it was poor dynamics; everything is compressed on the same level. The guitar tone is heavily distorted, dark, muddy, and the guitars themselves are way too forward in the mix, worsening everything to a point where it is difficult to focus on any instruments even with decently detailed headphones. It's a mess, and the lack of dynamics makes it sound a bit dull. Despite all of this, with each passing song, you can see more and more of the rough sketch of what Ghost will become. The ethereal voice of the singer, the themes in the songs, the over-the-top (on purpose) satanic lyrics. Some of those are quite catching, which will become a regular thing for Ghost, and I caught myself whistling Rituals. Despite the over-dramatization on my part, this first album is not as atrocious as I made it out to be, and I will probably add it to my rotation, but only listen to it on speakers, where the bad mixing is less jarring. The first album definitely has its identity, and if I wasn't such an audio snob, I could even find the lo-fi nature of the album charming. It was extremely well received at the time, the target audience was as mentioned above, a subset of metal/hard rock fans who care a bit more about the melodic aspect of songs.

• Infestissumam That second album also begins with a one-minute-long intro. A Capella chants in latin, very sober and atmospheric. Then after ten seconds the drums loudly join; alleluia, dynamics! The bass also joins, being actually distinguishable in the mix. Soon after the guitars too and the tone is much improved with a present top end, still distorted but sitting where they should in the mix. The second track begins and all of it wasn't a fluke. Those first few tracks are much more progressive in their approach to music, really contrasting with the musical simplicity of their first album. They go further in their approach to everything, the voice is more ethereal, the texts are even more over-the-top satanic (some of it is sung in latin), the instrumentals sound airy and out of this world. This album for me seems like it is the one that really forged and solidified their identity. They focused on one of the strong points of the first album and of the band; the voice. Incredibly catchy lyrics in this album, it looks like they really paid attention to that. A ton of bangers on this one, track 5 to 9 are incredible, especially 5. Not much else to say, it is just a very solid album overall, and it was also extremely well-received, even better than the last one. I would say the target audience remains more or less the same, but maybe with people who appreciate progressive music more in mind.

• Meliora Meliora is one of the most coherent and consistent albums of Ghost in my opinion. The first two songs are what I feel like Ghost is at its essence; cryptic satanic lyrics, musically interesting and progressive-ish, technically impressive, both on the instrument and production front, and amazing clear vocals performance, different than most bands and not just in metal. The third track is my favorite from this album (it appeals to the lover boy in me). After a brief transition track, the fifth one is a light track, more relaxed; a welcomed break from the heaviness of the previous track. The songs gradually building up in intensity, to launch us into the sixth track, which opens very heavy with a fast tempo. This one is pretty catchy and definitely more experimental, a contrast from the seventh track and onward that are a bit more classic. The last two are catchy as hell. This concludes what is one of the best albums of Ghost and I believe the organic evolution of Ghost from their first album. This album was also extremely well received, and seems more tailored toward their listeners who appreciated the melodic part of the music beforehand, which is still a major overlap with their original target audience.

• Popestar Popestar is a five-track EP from Ghost, wildly different from their previous release, it's more fun, and definitely not as heavy. It is borderline pop and I would say way more approachable for the mainstream audiences. It is almost entirely comprised of covers and as an aside in their discography, I think it's a fun intermission. But it being mostly covers takes away the “Ghost sound”: the voice is different and more nasally, the riffs are simpler, less progressive and there are very few satanic themes in this one, which is one of the pillars of Ghost, and it is overall a pretty weak release. Although the first song of this album was a wild success, the rest of this EP was not well received at all by their fans. Now, this album looks like it is destined for people who are more into pop, and not really into Ghost, which, surprise, appears to be very little of their original audience. However, on my end, this EP being much different than their usual songs was nothing noteworthy since those were covers and not original material.

• Prequelle Prequelle goes back to the tradition of the first track of the album being a one-minute-ish intro track, this one being particularly creepy. The second track is fairly different from Ghost's usual offering, it's more fun, energetic and one of the only tracks from the main albums of Ghost that I would see being radio approved. Thankfully, the next two tracks are pure Ghost, and the fifth one, while being really different, is a pure banger. The next three tracks are not my cup of tea at all, I find they lack depth and are overall a bit bland with the lyrics being also not very inspired, and feel overall “sanitized”. Those three songs are very coherent amongst themselves, it sounds like they come from one same EP, completely separate from the main album. After one big skip, we reach the ninth song, which contains riffs that sound a lot like a slower instrumental version of the seventh, so not ideal in my opinion. But all is forgiven after; track 10 is a very fitting more melodic ending to the album and the two bonus tracks are pretty great. As a whole that is their weakest album release to this point, the lyrics are pretty weak, and the instrumentals seem a bit uninspired. The first half of the album can get pretty heavy (for Ghost), but the latter half is only composed of bland ballads and generic pop-rock songs. We can definitely see a shift in the target audience here, almost as if they are trying to retain the public they attracted with Popestar. It did not bode well for the direction of their next album.

• Impera I'm gonna be honest, I only listened to this album twice before deciding to write this post, and I was not looking forward to listening to it a couple more times to be able to criticize it. But I don't want to be talking out of my ass on something I listened to more than a year ago, so here we go. It starts on the traditional minute-long intro track which is fairly basic. Then the second track plays and my memory did serve me right; it's garbage I still really don't like it and it is very different from Ghost's earlier offering. It sounds like a generic pop band trying to vaguely and clumsily replicate the Ghost's music without their original sound and vibe. It continues on with each track, each time it sounds like a different band trying to copy Ghost. It's almost a parody of Ghost; the instrumentals are very basic, the singing doesn't really resemble anything we're used to, and worst of all it doesn't make for a coherent album. We then reach track 5 which almost sounds like it belongs in their previous album, in the middle of the three horrendous tracks aforementioned. The one after that sounds like it belongs in this album but is wildly different from the earlier tracks. We then reach a minute-ish interlude, which is more than necessary for me to calm down. What comes after is even weirder, it doesn't sound like it belongs anywhere; not in Ghost's earlier work, not in its current one, and honestly it sounds like it comes straight out of a musical – it's fucking bombastic. It is so over the top, with trumpets, a pirate-ish voice rolling Rs, and weird timing, the song is all over the place but at the same time makes sense. And honestly, I'm here for it, it may not sound anything like Ghost, but it fucking slaps. I saw someone describe it as a Disney movie villain song and it is spot-on. Unfortunately, the penultimate song of the album songs like a pop-rock boys' band trying to make Ghost, not only is it not my cup of tea but it is completely dissonant with the first half of the album. The last one sort of follows this, in the (cheesy) lyrics, voice and backing track that take more from the boys band side, while the instrumental comes from a more “traditional” Ghost song. It still doesn't really sound like Ghost. This concludes the main part of the album, as for the two bonus tracks I didn't even realize when one finished and the other started, they are still nothing like old Ghost, but at least the singer sounds like he's having fun. I was genuinely hoping that after re-listening to it, it would just be a case of their stuff being slightly different now and I'm overreacting, but it's not the case. My main gripe with this album is that it doesn't sound like Ghost at all. Everything they had built themselves upon in the first four albums is almost completely gone. It is also super inconsistent, has no clear direction, is completely dissonant with itself, and sounds like listening to a randomly generated playlist on shuffle. This album really lacks its own identity, and despite the little brilliances here and there, most of the songs really don't have a lot of character. The lyrics are pretty bland, cheesy and repetitive. It is definitely more mainstream, more approachable from an outsider's perspective, radio-friendly. To give credit where credit is due, it is one of the most impressive releases from Ghost on the production side of things, mixing and mastering are on fucking point. Not really sure how this album came out to be, but one thing is sure, the target audience has now shifted to something more mainstream. It seems to have completed its transition, as opposed to having one ass cheek on two different chairs like in their previous release. It's meant for a newer more mainstream audience, not metal fans, just people who like pop-rock. Still, this album was well-ish received, being really divisive between the newer/older fans, their newer fans loving it. This concludes our foray into Ghost's discography and the evolution of the target audience.
  
  

Should their music have stayed the same, or should a band inevitably evolve? Who are artists actually writing music for? Who do artists owe their success to? Can I come up with any more generic questions? I could go on all day, but I refuse to answer them, the answer to those is not what I'm interested in. Is Ghost mainstream now? Certainly not, but it seems that their later releases are trying to appeal to a mainstream audience more foreign to the metal scene. A fairly big departure from the underground rocky beginnings of Opus Eponymous and to the perfection of that beginning being Meliora, they are now for the mainstream, fleshed out to the point of sanitization. Which is fine, their new stuff not being my cup of tea does not take away from the enjoyment I continue to receive from their older releases. I'm just hopping off the Ghost train, taking with me four albums and one EP.

Now, if I go by the other (amazing) blog posts on here, it appears that a sign-off is in order, so here you are:

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie