GHOST FRONTMAN’S TRUE IDENTITY REVEALED?

(Ghost photo by Maija Lahtinen.)

I’m aware that this story has been out for some time and isn’t exactly “new,” but for whatever reason it’s barely been covered in the metal media until today. And so:

What a crazy day today is turning out to be for metal vocalists.

The members of Ghost go to great lengths to keep their true identities a secret — they perform in masks and disquise their voices in intevriews, and the members of the band other than the lead singer are simply called “Nameless Ghouls” — but it appears that the identity of frontman Papa Emeritus has been uncovered. From Metal Insider:

Apparently Ghost’s singer Papa Emeritus/the satanic pope is none other than Tobias Forge, who in addition to previously singing in the bands Repugnant and Subvision also collaborated with experimental rock group Magna Carta Cartel. Though numerous sources apparently noticed this before, the Encyclopedia Metallum first brought this to light when it was discovered that Forge is credited as The Ghoul Writer by the Swedish Performing Rights Society, the same name he’s credited as in Ghost’s debut full length album Opus Eponymous.

It was fairly obvious all along that the members of Ghost were not exclusively in other popular metal bands… if they were we probably would’ve known their identities long before now. But, if true, does this ruin the appeal of Ghost to so many hipsters taken by the mysterious nature of the band? I’m somewhere in the middle when it comes to Ghost; they aren’t incredibly original and they’re barely metal, but they do write some incredibly catchy songs and that is something I can appreciate. So for me it just comes down to this: will they continue to write good songs? The imagery doesn’t really matter to me, but I know it does for a lot of folks.

Of course it’s entirely possibly that Tobias Forge is not, in fact, Papa Emeritus and this is just the machination of an over-zealous Internet sleuth. I guess we’ll find out soon.

-VN