
And I definitely know that I'm too far from the shore that I started off from to not realize the severity of the situation. "But you have to do something because people are watching. "Once the spotlight is cast on you, you can either step out of it and hope it won't follow you, or you have to speak," Forge acknowledges. But the devil, as usual, is in the details. As a result, Forge's astonishing run of anonymity has come to a close. Naturally, his real name appears in the legal documents. They're suing Forge for money they say he owes them. So that makes the story a little different because we weren't building our brand on the indulgence of sort of masturbating in the personal cult."īut now some former Nameless Ghouls have filed a lawsuit. "And that proved to be more or less impossible. "It goes against the idea of being a person onstage: wanting not to be seen," he observes. He was - and is - the rarest of rock stars: Rather than craving the spotlight, he actively avoided it. Obfuscation, denial and misdirection were the orders of the day. For the first seven years of the band's public existence, Forge did everything in his power to preserve his anonymity. And now, on Ghost's fourth and latest album, Prequelle, a "new" frontman has emerged: Cardinal Copia.Ĭonfused yet? Well, that's because it's supposed to be confusing - or at least misleading. For press purposes, Forge would pose as a Nameless Ghoul instead. The characters appeared onstage in skull makeup and three-cornered papal mitre, singing odes to Lucifer and songs about zombie queens, about imaginary schoolgirls with psychic powers, and about very real Hungarian countesses who bathed in the blood of virgins. You'd never know the truth.Īs Ghost's vocalist, songwriter and all-around mastermind, Forge dreamed up a successive string of satanic popes - Papa Emeritus I, II and III - one for each of the band's first three albums. You'd never know that he's secretly into Satan. He speaks with a Swedish accent and could easily pass for a grad student at UCLA, albeit a particularly pale one. Video of Ghost - Rats (Official Music Video)įorge doesn't even look like a dude who might be in a band, much less a band like Ghost.
