Ghost reveal new Phantomime EP details

From Loundersound.

Hallelujah! Ghost are celebrating Easter Sunday with the surprise release of a provocative, unholy and decidedly NSFW video for a cover of Genesis‘ Jesus He Knows Me.

Back in January, the occult-metal icons took out a billboard in Hollywood, California featuring Papa Emeritus IV’s face and the teasing message ‘Jesus Is Coming’. We now know the relevance of this, with Tobias Forge’s band re-imagining Jesus He Knows Me, a satire of money-grabbing TV evangelists, which originally featured on Genesis’ 1991 album We Can’t Dance.

The song includes the chorus lyric, “‘Cause Jesus, He knows me and He knows I’m right / I’ve been talkin’ to Jesus all my life“.

Ghost’s take on the Tony Banks / Phil Collins / Mike Rutherford-written track is accompanied by an Alex Ross Perry-directed video which promises to ‘make the case that one person’s beauty is another’s blasphemy’, the band’s ‘people’ promise. The video features one Father Jim DeFroque, host of the evangelical radio show Jesus Talk with Father Jim DeFroque on KLAQ in El Paso, Texas.

Viewer discretion is very, VERY much advised, particularly for its eye-opening climax.

The new single is a teaser for the Swedes’ forthcoming covers EP, PHANTOMIME. The EP, set for release on May 18, will feature Tobias Forge’s band offer their own spin on songs by Television, The Stranglers, Iron Maiden and Tina Turner, in addition to their Genesis cover.

The track listing for PHANTOMIME is:

1. See No Evil (Television)
2. Jesus He Knows Me (Genesis)
3. Hanging Around (The Stranglers)
4. Phantom of the Opera (Iron Maiden)
5. We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome) (Tina Turner)

With the surprise release of their cover of Genesis’ Jesus He Knows Me on Easter Sunday (yesterday, April 9), and the enticing prospect of hearing what Tobias Forge’s band have done with classic songs by Iron Maiden, Television, The Stranglers, and Tina Turner on their forthcoming Phantomime EP, scheduled for release on May 18, this is a good time to be Ghost fan.

But that’s not all: a new interview with Forge in NME brings both good news and bad news for disciples of the occult-rock messiahs. The good news? The revelation that Ghost have recorded covers of classic songs by Rush (Distant Early Warning, originally featured on the Canadian trio’s 1984 album Grace Under Pressure), Misfits, U2, and Motorhead, the latter a piano-led reimagining. The bad news? Tobias Forge isn’t saying when, where or if we’ll get to hear these as-yet-unreleased treats.

In the interview, Forge reveals that he recorded the songs while he and producer Klas Åhlund were immersed in the making of Impera, Ghost’s current album, Impera, which was released in March last year.

“During the demoing of Impera I kept working on demos for what I just referred to as the ‘cover album’,” he says. “Originally, the idea was to have 10 songs on this covers record, because I wanted to make a complete record and that LP was going to basically mirror Impera somehow.”

“Originally the selection was a little bit more eclectic,” Forge revealed. “Look, I’m not going into great detail about them, because we might use some of them at a later point. But, it was basically like a piano version of a Motorhead song.

“There was [also] a Misfits song that was really cool and a U2 track. We recorded it all. In fact, we did a really finished demo of Rush’s Distant Early Warning, and then after Impera I was just like, ‘I want to do a rock EP. A pure rock EP!’”

The decision to trim this possible 10-track album down to EP length came when Forge realised he was quite “fried” by the Impera album sessions.

“I thought I’ll sort of take away some of the more experimental stuff, and just focus on the rock songs – the ones that are energetic,” he tells NME. “The ones that don’t go into any excursions, as in not a piano-led Motörhead track!

“There were even instrumental covers; like proper instrumentals! But, I just wanted to basically make a new recording that was as opposed to Impera as could be – quick and fairly simple.”

As to Ghost’s future plans beyond Phantomime, Forge was a little less forthcoming, but teased the prospect of “a new face”.

“Well, I mean, everything always changes,” he says. “Nothing ever lasts forever… Everything has its circuit, and things will always come to pass. We just need to deal with them, right? Does that mean that it ends? No. It means that there’s just a new face to it.”

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