Lovers of horror movies and hard rock, attention! In May, as the final venue of their tour, Ghost will visit Hungary a bit, and I would like to fill the Budapest Arena. The easternmost point of the band’s tour in Western Europe will be Hungary, where we can expect a fantastic evocation from the multiple Grammy Award-winning band.
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For those who would be new to the name, Ghost is a band that has been running essentially since 2010, blending the feel of classic horror movies with the hard rock music of the 70s. The band has released four albums so far, and last week they released their favorite song, Call Me Little Sunshine, for their fifth studio album, which debuted in March this year.
The returning guests at some of the world’s most significant rock and metal festivals have been touring and performing on stage for years like Iron Maiden, Avanged Sevenfold, or Guns N ’Roses. Their professional recognition is also beyond question, as from 2014 to 2016, for three years, they also won the Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock / Metal Album.
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The band’s style mainly uses the hard rock of the seventies, but it also has a mixed and psychedelic world of sound from the performers of the sixties, as well as an imprint of the metal music of the eighties. The lyrics mostly evoke rhymes from early black metal songs, while the sounds go back to Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and in some places the original Metallica. They are also on the Blacklist processing disk, where we can get a ghosted version of the famous Enter Sandman.
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One of the most distinctive features of the band is the unique and grandiose visual show they are used to in live performances. The band usually consists of five to six members, one of whom is an anonymous ghoul, with the exception that they stand on stage with a uniform black jacket and mask covering their identities. The identities of former musicians are often revealed, but they try to keep the identities of current ones secret.
The only exception to this is the band’s founder and frontman, Tobias Forge, who usually appears in the costume of a dark pope or religious figure. His stage personality also changes many times. Usually, at the end of a tour for a particular album, the current frontman is usually fired, and then Tobias reincarnates on stage for the new record and new tour as a fresh character. So previously he was Papa Emeritus I, II and III as well as Papa Nihil. He is currently appearing in front of an audience in the person of Papa Emeritus IV, which is likely to change soon.
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On the other hand, the spectacle and theme, which was an advantage for them in the beginning and for which several publishers rushed after them, also had a disadvantage over time. The scenery evoking the temple, the lyrics that enliven the devil, and the frontman, reminiscent of a skeletal pope, aroused displeasure from many. While there was no direct intimidation at Ghost, as is the case with so many anti-Christian or black metal bands, it is a sensitive topic to which deeply religious people often react negatively.
When they switched labels after their second album and joined a division of Universal Music Group, they tried to record in Nashville. The band operates several songs with gothic choirs, for which, thanks to the lyrics, no entrepreneur was found throughout Tennessee. They had to go all the way to Hollywood, the other end of the continent, to find a team to provide the full-backed vocals.
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In another case, a burger franchise promoting rock and metal music named a hamburger called Ghost in honor of the band, whose recipe included goat’s shoulder, red wine, and sacrificial wafer. A local Christian food blogger rebuked them for saying that despite his love of music here or there, he thinks it goes against the principles of Christianity. In response, the restaurant donated $ 1,500 to Christian charities, showing them that the community was important to them, but the name of the burger was not changed, citing the U.S. Constitution.
Even though they started breaking into the US, radio bands on the continent were taken away from the band a lot of times, many record companies refused to make albums, and they didn’t get a television release. It finally broke in 2015 when they were featured on a Halloween special in the Late Show.
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Nonetheless, this has not broken the spirit of the team, thanks to which they are now hugely popular in Europe and America as well, and it is not difficult for them to fill the twenty-three arenas of fifteen countries. We can be convinced of this strength on 18 May. I’ll be back in March with a marrow album critique of the new album, in the meantime, let’s get the four discs so far from Ghost!
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