Ghost have started the countdown to the March 11 release of their fifth studio album, Impera, with the release of the album’s first official single, the haunting Call Me Little Sunshine.
Produced by Klas Åhlund and mixed by the legendary Andy Wallace (Slayer, Nirvana), the 12-track follow-up to 2018’s Prequelle also features Hunter’s Moon, which was released as a single in 2021, and which features on the soundtrack of the film Halloween Kills.
“I came up with that concept [ for Impera ] years ago,” Forge revealed in a 2021 interview with El Paso, Texas rock radio station KLAQ. “We played in Seattle in 2013, 2014 — something like that — we played at Showbox At The Market. I remember that day I came up with the idea for this record, this upcoming record. Because I got a book called The Rule of Empires. So, basically, I wanted to make a record about the rise and ultimately the unescapable fails and falls of empires."
Ghost’s ‘people’ are already billing the album as “the most ambitious and lyrically incisive entry in the Ghost canon:
The good people at Loma Vista say: “Over the course of Impera‘s s 12-song cycle, empires rise and fall, would-be messiahs ply their hype (financial and spiritual alike), prophecies are foretold as the skies fill with celestial bodies divine and man-made… All in all, the most current and topical Ghost subject matter to date is set against a hypnotic and darkly colourful melodic backdrop making Impera a listen like no other.”
The full track listing for the album is:
1. Imperium
2. Kaisarion
3. Spillways
4. Call Me Little Sunshine
5. Hunter’s Moon
6. Watcher In The Sky
7. Dominion
8. Twenties
9. Darkness At The Heart Of My Love
10. Grift Wood
11. Bite Of Passage
12. Respite On The Spital Fields
The Swedish ghouls will tour the US with Volbeat, beginning January 25.
