GHOST Completes Work On New Covers EP, Promises 'Even Bigger' Show In The Fall

Swedish occult rockers GHOST have completed work on a new EP for a fall release via Loma Vista. The effort, which consists primarily of covers, was helmed by English producer Tom Dalgety, who has previously worked with ROYAL BLOOD and KILLING JOKE, among others.

Asked why GHOST chose to release another EP instead of returning to the studio to begin work on a full-length follow-up to last year's "Meliora", A Nameless Ghould told the KATT Rock 100.5 podcast "No Brown M&Ms" (hear audio below): "Because when we do a new record, we need a new Papa [Editor's note: In a parody of the Catholic Church's tradition of papal succession, GHOST singer Papa Emeritus is purportedly replaced by a new Papa for each GHOST album.] and then we're gonna change eras. We needed more time to… Because this era, especially visually, I think that… I'm not gonna throw stones at the show that we're doing right now, but this was definitely a baby format of what I had in mind. On an ideal night, at a big theater, it looks okay; I mean, it's cool [and] it maximizes the thing that we're doing. But I felt that we really need another chance to show what we can do if we have a bigger production on this cycle."

He continued: "Obviously, we're still a band [that is] growing… Fortunately, sometimes it's a growing pain of not… As far as we know, we haven't really peaked yet, and this tour is bigger than the previous tour in many ways, and the tour that we're gonna do in the fall that we haven't announced, so we can't say it yet, but it's gonna be even bigger — bigger venues, more dates and all over the place. So it's useful when you're growing during an album cycle to sort of put in an extra gear into it, with a new EP and sort of revamp the whole thing, still being thematically the same thing."

Regarding why GHOST wanted to record another EP of covers after releasing "If You Have Ghost" in 2013, the Nameless Ghoul said: "It's just a good way to… It's a little bit recreational in a way. It's also a good way for us to incorporate elements… I think it was, in a way, more important when we did 'If You Have Ghost', because at that point we just had almost two albums done, and we wanted more different types of seasoning to be put into our dish in order to make it interesting. It's also now… It sort of serves a little bit like… Yeah, if you hear the EP, don't think that, 'Oh, the next album is gonna sound exactly like this,' but that is a good way for us to sneak in elements that are, like, you might hear a synth sound like this on the next record, but not as evident. So where 'If You Have Ghosts' [the Roky Erickson cover which was included on 'If You have Ghost'] was definitely a new dimension of pop-rock that we hadn't really done before. I mean, it's sort of closer to R.E.M. than it is BLACK SABBATH. We're not doing the same thing this time, but we're doing something else in order to get people to feel comfortable with [the direction of the next album]."

In addition to the Roky Erickson cover "If You Have Ghosts", "If You Have Ghost" featured versions of songs that were originally recorded by ABBA, ARMY OF LOVERS and DEPECHE MODE.

GHOST won the Grammy for "Best Metal Performance" during the pre-telecast ceremony at the 58th annual Grammy Awards. GHOST was nominated for the song "Cirice" from "Meliora".

"Cirice" recently reached the Top 10 at rock radio, the first song from the band to get significant airplay in the U.S.