GHOST's TOBIAS FORGE Thinks His Band Can Be One Of Future Music Festival Headliners

GHOST mastermind Tobias Forge says that his band can become one of the next generation of music festival headliners.

Since there are many festivals taking place through Europe and the U.S. every year, organizers are forced to battle with each other over an already-diminished pool of artists with enough pulling power to top a bill.

Asked by Banger TV in a new interview if he thinks GHOST can be one of the artists who will headline rock festivals once bands like METALLICA, KISS and OZZY OSBOURNE have all hung up their instruments for good, Forge said (see video below): "I think that we could be one band for the future. There needs to be a myriad. There needs to be several. It will solve itself. Right now, obviously, the mainstream is dominated by hip-hop, and it wasn't 10 years ago, and 10 years from now, it won't be. Everything comes and goes, and there will be a new rock wave."

Forge also talked about his belief that younger hip-hop artists have adjusted to streaming music services' demands more quickly than artists from other genres, and have thrived accordingly.

"One of the differences between rock music, from a growth point of view, and hip-hop is that you get new hip-hop acts coming out two, three years ago, and they're now, like, the biggest shit on the planet," he said. "The curve, the trajectory is closer to what rock was. Like, look at [IRON] MAIDEN. They toured a lot, so I'm not saying that, but their journey from playing their first show in America to headlining Madison Square Garden was just a few years. 'Powerslave', that gigantic tour of America, was just three or four years into their career. Whereas nowadays we're still being sometimes mentioned as, 'Oh, you're a new band.' It's, like, eight years ago, we had our first record. I know in the greater scheme of rock and roll, eight years is nothing. We're still total newbies. But eight years it's still. In METALLICA world, the first record came out in '83. We're at the 'Black Album' in terms of time. It's different. Whereas in the past, rock and roll was dictated by teenagers and 20-year-olds. And I think that that's an unavoidable thing. And I think that we need to realize that the future of rock might be dictated by people who are not even 20 years [old] at this point. And I think that I still have a few things that I wanna achieve that could be of interest to the rock-loving public. I would love to be part of that in the future. But I can never be the new 20-year-old band."

GHOST's hugely successful "A Pale Tour Named Death" North American tour visited nearly 40 cities, including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Toronto.

GHOST has been on the road in support of its latest album, "Prequelle", which came out in June 2018.

Forge performed as a "new" Papa Emeritus on each of the band's first three albums, with each version of Papa replacing the one that came before it. Papa Emeritus III was retired in favor of Cardinal Copia before the release of "Prequelle".

"Prequelle" debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and features the chart-topping rock single "Rats". The disc was tracked in 2017 at Artery studios in Stockholm with producer Tom Dalgety (OPETH, ROYAL BLOOD) and mixed in January 2018 at Westlake Studios in West Hollywood, California with Andy Wallace (NIRVANA, SLAYER).

In December, GHOST nabbed two new Grammy nominations, "Best Rock Album" for "Prequelle" and Best Rock Song for "Rats". The latest nods took place nearly three years after GHOST became the first Swedish rock band ever to win a Grammy Award — 2016's "Best Metal Performance" for the song "Cirice".

Photo credit: Mikael Eriksson