Although Ghost, in common with every other band on the planet, have had to reschedule their 2021 touring plans, the Swedish group are still looking to release the follow-up to 2018’s Prequelle in early 2021, as originally planned.
Last year the band’s leader Tobias Forge revealed work had already begun work on Ghost’s fifth studio album, telling Billboard that he had “tons of bits and pieces” written. He suggested that the album will be “thematical” in nature and feature “slightly more riffage” than its acclaimed predecessor.
In a new interview with Sweden website VK, the singer reaffirmed his desire to have the album out in early 2021, and revealed that while Prequelle touched upon plague deaths and mass hysteria, he wouldn’t be seeking to channel the current global pandemic into his next set of lyrics.
“I have already made an album about God's wrath and doomsday, even if Prequelle was not about just infection from a medical perspective,“ he says. “I have a feeling that there will be plenty of doomsday and quarantine-confirming records in the future, and I think I may not participate in it.”
Ghost brought the curtain down on their Prequelle album cycle in March with a gig in Mexico City, where fans in attendance got the first glimpse of Papa Emeritus IV, who will front the band on their next album cycle.
In an interview with Revolver, Forge suggested that Prequelle was “a little ballad heavy” and that he wanted the group’s fifth album to lean more towards 2015’s Meliora.
Forge says: “I want to make a different record from Prequelle. I want it to feel different. If I dare to say heavier, people think that it's going to be Mercyful Fate all the way – but I definitely have a darker, heavier record in mind.”
But he cautions: “I have always pushed myself to write the songs that we don't have instead of going back. It maybe would've been a smart move to just try to replicate Opus Eponymous.
“I can regurgitate. I grew up with metal. It's in my DNA, so I can formulate death-metal lyrics easily. But I try not to repeat myself on that.”
