Ghost are “Very Far” into the Writing for Their Next Album

As we learned yesterday, Ghost are very, very popular. And at the very moment we conjectured what their next album may sound like — will it be the true crossover smash many think they’re capable of? —The PRP published a quote from which we learned that Ghost’s next album is very much in the band’s current consciousness, too.

Speaking to Billboard Magazine, one of Ghost’s Nameless Ghouls — who, for interview purposes, I think it’s generally accepted is always Tobias Forge, aka Papa Emeritus — revealed that the bulk of the writing for Ghost’s next album, the follow-up to 2015’s Meliora, is already complete:

We haven’t really started the pre-production yet, but I am very far into the writing. I’m usually piling stuff up, and then by the time it comes to pre-production, that’s when you start going through it and see what you have. I think that we have a pretty good idea of what we’re doing next, but once we start recording I usually get very inspired and work a lot faster.

On that timeline a mid-2017 release certainly seems possible, which would put them neatly on the two-year album cycle mark.

Elsewhere in the interview, The Ghoul also explained Ghost’s decision to cover The Eurythmics and other seemingly unexpected bands on their new Popestar EP instead of influences that would be considered more obvious:

We always have a little short list of songs that we want to do. We always find songs that are interesting for us to work with. There must be some kind of ignition or something, a spark somewhere where you want to change it or, I hate to say make it better but at least something I feel you can definitely do a version of it that isn’t necessarily straight-up.

There’s always your more anal, puritan metal people who are like, ‘Aw, fuck, you should do King Diamond.’ “Why? Why would we cover King Diamond or all the bands that we are obviously in a way influenced by? Why play a worse version of something? Yeah, you can take a Metallica song or an Iron Maiden song or any band that works, that we’ve been influenced by all these years, and make it completely piano-esque or symphonic or something, but I’d rather do something people may not expect so much.

A man after our own hearts! We’ve long argued that straight-up metal covers are completely boring, and Ghost seem to have an inherent understanding of that.

Stream Popestar below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-uu23Izf_A