Metal Anarchy

During a recent interview with NME, Ghost’s Tobias Forge revealed that the band recorded a number of other covers that didn’t make the cut for their upcoming covers EP “Phantomime” (out May 18). Among them were tracks from Rush, Misfits, U2, and Motörhead.

Forge said the following:

“During the demoing of ‘Impera’, I kept working on demos for what I just referred to as the ‘cover album.’ Originally, the idea was to have 10 songs on this covers record, because I wanted to make a complete record and that LP was going to basically mirror ‘Impera’ somehow.

Originally the selection was a little bit more eclectic. Look, I’m not going into great detail about them, because we might use some of them at a later point. But it was basically like a piano version of a Motörhead song. There was [also] a Misfits song that was really cool and a U2 track. We recorded it all. In fact, we did a really finished demo of Rush’s ‘Distant Early Warning’, and then after ‘Impera’, I was just like, ‘I want to do a rock EP. A pure rock EP.’”

He went on to say that he settled on an EP instead of an album because he felt “fried” from working on “Impera”:

“I thought I’ll sort of take away some of the more experimental stuff, and just focus on the rock songs — the ones that are energetic. The ones that don’t go into any excursions, as in not a piano-led Motörhead track. There were even instrumental covers; like proper instrumentals. But I just wanted to basically make a new recording that was as opposed to ‘Impera’ as could be — quick and fairly simple.”