GHOST's TOBIAS FORGE: 'I'm A Control Freak And A Perfectionist'

In a brand new interview with All Things Loud, GHOST leader Tobias Forge was asked how he looks back on the band's latest album, "Prequelle", now that it has been out for exactly a year.

"I don't think that much of the record," he responded. "To use a very business-oriented term, I think more of the entire album cycle and where that record has gotten us as a band, and what we're doing tour-wise. From that aspect, it's been phenomenal, really good. Because it's wrapping now, I can definitely see the end of the cycle coming up. I can look back at it now and think to myself, 'We've achieved exactly what we set out to achieve with the record.' The record was very honest and not a repetition of anything I'd done before, and that's good. I like it. I don't listen to the album, but that's the same thing with all of my records. As soon as I'm done writing a record and we've started playing it live, I already stop listening to it. I honestly can't, because it makes me slightly nauseous."

According to Forge, he usually starts looking toward the next cycle in a more concrete manner when he is "wrapping up the recording process for the previous album. There's already things I leave a production with which I know I want to do differently or improve for the next time," he said. "I'm not trying to sound like a killjoy, but there are always things in a production which you eventually realize were not necessary. Like, 'that was not good,' or, 'We could have done that better.' It's not necessarily simple stuff like doing a chorus differently, but more a case of, 'Ah! I wish we'd spent two more days playing bass,' or, 'I wish we would have tuned that tom or snare better.' I hear it all the time… But, you see, I'm a control freak and a perfectionist, and I really, really want to feel like I've done everything in my power to create as good a product as possible… as good an album as possible, as good of a craft as I can. That's why I walk from a production telling myself that I want to do certain things differently next time round. As far as writing goes, though, the cycle starts a lot more modest and at a lower frequency. I end up with a few things I'd left out of the current record, and then I add a lot of new things. And that's everything, from small snippets of music that I might have recorded to things I have in my head, or notes. I have a lot of notes with titles and lyrics, conceptual things. Just ideas, really."

GHOST is spending the bulk of its summer as special guest on METALLICA's four-leg "WorldWired" European stadium tour. Leg one saw GHOST playing to more than a quarter-million fans; leg two kicked off on June 8, and legs three and four will take place July and August. GHOST will perform at Heavy Montreal on July 27, and then kick off its North American "Ultimate Tour Named Death" headline arena tour on September 13.

Forge recently confirmed that he will return to the studio in January 2020 to begin work on follow-up to "Prequelle". He added that he wants to "make a different record from 'Prequelle'. I definitely have a darker, heavier record in mind." Forge explained that "Prequelle" turned out to be "a little ballad heavy."

"Prequelle" debuted in June 2018 at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 chart. It has yielded the chart-topping "Rats" and "Dance Macabre", a well as the new single "Faith".