Dave Grohl Produces New Ghost EP - Streaming Now

Dave Grohl has produced an EP of four cover songs for Swedish "death Satan metal band" Ghost B.C., available for live streaming now.

I use the quotation marks because Ghost has not sounded like death metal, well, ever. But due to the band's devilish lyrics and KISS-like mysterious image on Devil's Advocate steroids, the band has been lumped in with other truly awful screamo bands.

But these guys have always been more Blue Oyster Cult than Graf Orlock.

Great melodies, strong musical chops, surprising arrangements, and yeah, tongue in cheek Sabbath-esque image. In an interiew it was mentioned "It's sort of like Eddie for Iron Maiden, except we have our Eddie singing." Yep, these guys put the FUN in Funeral.

While I would have a Ghost novice start with the band's first album, and then go to the second, this EP is a nice addition to the discography, and the association with Grohl will no doubt draw some attention to the group, which they need to go more mainstream.

But really, how mainstream can you go when your catchiest song's chorus is "This chapel of ritual smells of dead human sacrifices from the altar bed."

The EP, which also adds a fifth song Secular Haze (live), will be out next week.

Stream it here:

Album and Concert Review - Ghost - Infestissumam

I have a theory that producers Rick Rubin and Nick Raskulinecz had a gentleman’s bet to see who could out-Sabbath the other on their latest projects. Rubin worked with the actual Black Sabbath on the band’s upcoming album ’13,’ while Raskulinecz was behind the desk for Swedish devil band Ghost B.C.’s latest, Infestissumam, released last month.

We won’t know until June when the Sabbath album comes out but good odds would go to Ghost, who out-Sabbathed Sabbath on its debut, Opus Eponymous.

Ghost is a real enigma. Their image is full on Satan: The band plays in black masks and robes, so you don’t know who they are, and the singer, Papa Emeritus, is in full papal gear including pointy hat and vestments, but with an angry skull mask obscuring his face. Both of their albums feature for example what sound like Gregorian chants but of course are topically a bit different.

I would have passed over this in two seconds if the music wasn’t so damn good. The Opus album is insane – there is not a bad track on it. Very melodic and far more Blue Oyster Cult than Disfigured Prostitute (yes that is a real band). The songs are total earworms. Great arrangements, layered vocal harmonies, even the odd synth part for dressing.

Yes, Ghost is the Schoolhouse Rock of Satanic music. Instead of singing about conjunction junction, you walk around singing “come together, together as one, come together, for Lucifer’s son.” Brilliant strategy if these guys are serious, Spinal Tap funny if they are not. Either way, they win.

So the new album, Infestissumam. It’s not as strong as Opus. If there were three tunes chopped out of it, it would stand side by side. But as it is, there are some songs that are shockingly too sing-songy and catchy and they just don’t work.

However, the songs that DO work are incredible. Secular Haze, Year Zero, and Monstrance Clock stand out, as does the pretty classic take on the ABBA song I'm a Marionette. The song Jigolo Har Megiddo sounds like it came right off of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.

Covering ABBA makes me think these guys are just riding this devil thing for a laugh (the Swedish bands have to stick together, right?), as does the impression that Monstrance Clock is probably a play on “Monsterous Cock.” I can see that as something someone said on the tour bus and was immediately turned into a song. It is about the conception of the devil’s son after all. I read an interview where one of the 'nameless ghouls' in the band (that is what they call themselves) said it's a little bit like Iron Maiden, except that in Ghost, Eddie (Maiden's zombie mascot) sings all the songs. Could not have said it better myself.

The other thing I find interesting is that the singer, Papa Emeritus, is now called Papa Emeritus II. Not sure if he died between albums and was replaced by a new guy. It was also funny that I got an email from Ghost last year asking me to vote for Papa when the Vatican was electing the new Pope. I did. Not sure it did any good…

So the album is good – some strong stuff. A few days after it came out, I saw the band live in Portland (last week). This was my third time seeing them. Last time, my buddy Dave and I drove three hours to Seattle to watch them play for 30 minutes, and then we drove back home. That is how much I like this band.

With the new album they are able to play a nice, 70 minute set that is chock full of great songs and theater. The best five or six new songs blend perfectly with the bulk of Opus, still in the set list.

I didn’t know the new album very well when I saw them but it didn’t matter. I immediately liked the songs they chose to play live.

There were rumors that the band took a massive advance when they signed to their label and there were a lot of concerns the music would suffer as the record label became increasingly eager to make its money back. But I hope Ghost is in it for the long game.

They are building a following by touring over and over, and a little bit like KISS, the mystique doesn’t hurt. My wife’s cousin and her husband, who do NOT generally go for this kind of music, proactively went to the show in Seattle the day after my Portland show. They were impressed. And if a mellow Dead Head can be impressed by Ghost, anyone can!

Below are a few photos from the Portland gig, plus a video for Secular Haze. Again, the fact that the video has Ghost on what looks like an Ed Sullivan-era sound stage cracks me up. Enjoy.

Concert Review: Ghost at The Showbox in Seattle

A bit of a 'real-time' review here from last night: Drove three hours to Seattle to catch Ghost at the Showbox where they opened for Mastodon and Opeth.

In fact I am typing this on my phone half way through Mastodon's set. Not a fan of these guys at all. Every song sounds the same with little melody or variation. A big snore for me. But I do want to see Opeth or we'd be on the road back to Portland already.

So, Ghost.

You can read my CD and Portland show reviews to know how I feel about Ghost. Or you can ponder the fact that my buddy Super Dave and I drove three hours on a Monday to hear six songs, and then drove back another three hours and go to work tomorrow.

Ghost is that kind of band.

They started at 7 p.m. sharp and played for 30 minutes exactly. They did six songs from their debut album: Con Claro Con Dio, Elizabeth, Prime Mover, Death Knell, Satan Prayer, Ritual.

I missed the inclusion of a couple of songs like Stand By Him but overall the gig was awesome. This band is fantastic live. Forget for a moment the image thing (caped, masked band; zombie pope singer). The songs are a highly effective amalgamation of old school Sabbath, BOC and Metallica.

They seem to have gotten even tighter since the last tour. The singer seemed even more cozy with his chosen persona. More than once I thought of a 70s era costumed Peter Gabriel but with only one character!

Anyhow very enjoyable. And finally I am at Mastodon's last song. Like the dinosaurs this band is named after, they need to be hit by meteors and global warming. Sorry, nothing redeemable at all about this band. They suck ass.

Fast forward a few hours. Opeth...

Opeth was very good - I thought they were playing Heart of the Sunrise as their opener but it was something else but just as proggy.

The band has listened to a lot of Yes, and certainly share a brotherhood with groups like Porcupine Tree. PT has in fact set the bar so high that it was hard for Opeth to match up.

But they were a welcome change from Mastodon, and a nice way to end the evening before the three hours back to Portland.

The best part of Mastodon's set (they had just left the stage):

Opeth:

Ghost Interviews Shed Light on Band Mission

OK yes I am still obsessed with Ghost. The combination of a KISS-like mystique and damn it a bunch of great songs is still totally turning my crank, and driving my wife and kids crazy as I stroll around the house singing "Death Knell!!!" Ha ha ha.

And this drives me to the Web where I am trying to learn more about this band.

In recent interviews I find some of the answers and as expected, this group is about putting on a great show, not selling your soul to the Devil. These guys are smart and know exactly what they are doing.

One of the guitarists was interviewed by the SF Weekly. I encourage you to read the whole article, called Swedish Metal Sensation Ghost on Anonymity, the Coming Apocalypse, and Sounding Like a Million Bucks in 1978 but here are the parts that grabbed me:

What Ghost has in common with that old black metal scene beyond the imagery and message, it goes back to the fact that when you read about bands like Mayhem, or Emperor, or Marduk, or whatever band from that time, there was no Internet. There wasn't anything except fanzines. Obviously when the shit hit the fan, the bigger magazines wrote about these things. But there weren't a lot of pictures. There were a lot of rumors. And that lack of access made things much more mystical and interesting. I think that has played a major role in what we're trying to achieve...

Where most bands nowadays try to raise their profile and their band's as much as possible because they don't want to miss out on anything, we're trying to do the opposite. Meanwhile, we're still trying to go forward in terms of getting better known. I know it's a bit of a paradox...But that's why we're trying to have Papa Emeritus be the star. Him. The old codger. The old pope. He's supposed to be the star. Not us as individuals. It's sort of like Eddie for Iron Maiden, except we have our Eddie singing.

...a lot of doom and bands that are in the scene that we're usually connected with are probably a bit more influenced by the harder stuff of Black Sabbath. Usually they sound like "Symptom of the Universe" or "Children of the Grave." That's all they wanted to sound like. And most doom bands are trying to sound like a less-produced version of the '70s, whereas I think in connection with Black Sabbath, we try to be as bold as they were when they did their ballads or their orchestral songs. We want our record to sound like a million-dollar production, but from 1978.

It's weird, because a lot of these really hardcore metal guys always refer to Sabbath Bloody Sabbath as being a miracle, groundbreaking proto-black metal album, where it's actually one of the softest Black Sabbath records. [It's] very mournful and openhearted. That same boldness is something we try to ... I'm not saying mimic, but we encourage ourselves to be very playful in the music that we're doing. We're not trying to fit in or think too much about what's cool or not. It's supposed to be passionate. I think you are really dead on that Black Sabbath and Mercyful Fate are necessary bands to have a band like Ghost.

As of right now, the next album is so far ahead in time. I mean, it's going to be out this year, but later this year. Nowadays you can't really play new material before the promotional period starts for the album, because once you play a song, it's on YouTube. It's everywhere. With the new album comes, not a new image, but a new show. Sort of like the next film [laughs]. So we're not going to incorporate any new material until the next album cycle starts. There's going to be a lot of changes, and the show is going to evolve drastically at that point. We're saving those goodies.

And from Portland's Willamette Week, we have Giving Up the Ghost: Don’t fear the Reaper—even if it’s a really convincing-looking Reaper. Some good stuff here:

“A lot of black-metal bands have an agenda where they actually say, ‘We want you to kill yourself,’” bemoans Ghost’s frontman. “We don’t have an agenda. Our uppermost goal is not to make people change anything. We want to change people into attenders of our concerts.” For an anonymous Swedish rock frontman who goes by the cryptic nomer “A Ghoul With No Name,” he’s pretty sincere.

“We as a group, we don’t have a militant agenda,” says the Ghoul, via telephone, when asked how serious his band is about the Devil. “We are entertainers. We are here to entertain everybody with a very horrid mind. Obviously, we’re six dudes playing in unison. So we’re a rock band. But we are drawn to create something that has more in common with theater or going to see The Omen at the cinema. Traditionally everything that’s remotely rock is devilish, and basically the first transparently really blasphemous artist was probably Elvis, with his sexually pulsating rock.”

I am trying to work out how to see the band when they open for Mastadon and Opeth this Spring, as they are skipping Portland. Maybe by then I'll have moved on to some other obsession, but I doubt it!

Concert Review - Ghost

So, I made it back alive. And it's only 11:30 PM.

Caught Ghost tonight on the 11th show of its 13 Dates of Doom tour, the Swedish band's first ever tour of the U.S.

As I said in my CD review yesterday, I was turned on to this band by a colleague who loves the darkest crevices of metal.

But in this case his advice to check the band out was right on. I got the band's CD Opus Eponymous and was hooked right away. The fact that they had a super theatrical show complete with Peter Gabriel-esque singer in full costume and makeup just sort of shoved it over the cliff for me.

The band packed the Hawthorne Theater in Portland on a Tuesday night no less, and like with seeing Them Crooked Vultures at the Roseland, I imagine this is the smallest venue where I will ever see this band. They are on their way to big things.

Maybe it's the KISS-like mystique, or the catchy music or the Sabbath meets Genesis tunes, but this band has something special. They only played about 50 minutes - their whole CD plus an oddly gorgeous cover of Here Comes The Sun. And no encore. Certainly left us wanting more.

Part of the fun was bringing my friend Dave to the show and not telling him what he was going to see. I broke out the CD in the car on the way there and as expected he dug the music. But as the smoke filled the Theater, I turned to him and said, "Oh by the way, these guys are kind of theatrical."

Turned out to be the understatement of the year.

The band as expected was completely shrouded. There was a notable absence of front lights and no spotlights so for much of the show the band was backlit, meaning you could see their silhouettes but not their fronts. The amount of fog would have made Pink Floyd envious.

Interesting musical notes - there was for sure a backing vocal track a la Rush, because the singer was the only guy with a mic, yet the backing vocals from the CD were very present. Also, the whole band used Orange amps (see photos), which is a very cool deal. They also had a sweet tour bus - I mean nicer than I have seen at shows a couple of levels above this one. Someone is funding these guys to tour in comfort or they made a deal with...oh wait...

Anyway, it was certainly a show I will remember for a very long time, and was pretty much exactly as exciting as I expected. They head to San Francisco tomorrow and I wish I could see them again.

And actually, just today a U.S. tour was announced with Ghost, Mastondon and Opeth, so there will be another chance for you all to see these guys. Like KISS opening for Fleetwood Mac, I expect Ghost will steal the show on this tour.

The merch guy said this tour had exceeded everyone's expectations across the board and I think they can log the Portland show in with this assessment. The show was epic.

Sorry for the disjointed review - I am still buzzing from the show. Below are some of my terrible iPhone photos, plus a YouTube of Here Comes The Sun. Wow.

CD Review - Ghost - Opus Eponymous

Now and again a band comes around that truly defies classification. Or at least goes so counter to what you expect that you are taken for a loop.

The Swedish group Ghost is one of those bands.

A colleague at work tried for literally weeks to get me to buy the band’s first (and only) album, Opus Eponymous and I resisted.

While I love this guy, his taste in music is far more hardcore than mine. Put it this way – I don’t have the new Disfigured Prostitute album but I am pretty sure he does.

I have told him a million times that I like melody with my metal. No screamo cookie monster stuff for me. Well, he must have been paying attention because Ghost is the most catchy devil music I have ever heard.

Yes – the band promotes itself as devil music, a la Mercyful Fate and the like. But I have to think it’s a ruse. The five-piece band dresses in black capes and cowls, with their faces obscured so you can’t see them. They don’t even have names – they are all called Faceless Ghouls in interviews and on promotional material.

The lead singer, Papa Emeritus, is like 70s-era Peter Gabriel from Hell. He wears religious vestments complete with huge bishop hat and his face painted with a black and white skull.

All of this raised the chuckle factor for me, but then I got a free offer for Spotify and really had no excuse but to stream up the Ghost album to pacify my friend. That was about a month and a half ago and now I own the album and will see the band tomorrow evening in Portland on its first ever U.S. tour.

If I were to publish a recipe for this band, I’d say blend 50 percent pure Black Sabbath with 25 percent Metallica, 15 percent Genesis, 5 percent Blue Oyster Cult and 5 percent Randy Rhodes-era Ozzy. Does that equal 100 percent? I dunno - math sucks.

The Sabbath and Metallica-infused dark riffage and speedy moments permeate the music, but it’s when they hit that prog-rock percentage that my ears really perk up.

The fifth track, Stand By Him, is a great example of this. Part-way through this very catchy rock song, the band busts into weird time signatures with spooky organ and Steve Hackett-esque hammer-ons and then goes into some very Metallica-inspired heaviness. The song winds its way back to the catchy chorus that sounds like a BOC outtake and ends with some great melodic guitar a la 70s Maiden. What the hell…

The closing instrumental number, Genesis (aptly named) sounds like an outtake from that band’s Foxtrot album. Ending a dark-assed CD like this with a gorgeous dual-acoustic passage is flipping genius.

Or take track two, Con Clavi Con Dio, which is pretty heavy overall but ends with dark-sounding Gregorian chants. Still, you feel like you know where the album is going at this point. Until track three, Ritual, starts up and sounds like 70s radio rock with chunky guitars and tasty arpeggios, giving way to the catchiest chorus I have ever heard promoting human sacrifice. I could not get it out of my head and had to look up the lyrics, which are “This chapel of ritual smells of dead human sacrifices from the altar bed.” Not Katy Perry-level pop but damn it’s just as catchy!

So – catchy music, kooky Devil lyrics, mysterious image, chameleon-like musical style. What’s not to like about Ghost? I will drop a full concert review if I make it back alive. Until then, here is a live version of Ritual from some sludge rock show in Europe. Enjoy!