Love them or hate them, there’s no denying that Ghost have brought their own vision of occult rock and metal to a whole new audience. On their early albums especially, the Swedes channeled the late 60s and early 70s Satanic shenanigans of bands like Coven and Black Widow, as well as the seminal riffage of Black Sabbath and the bewitching melodicism of Blue Oyster Cult.
They might now operate under the Ghostly glare of the mainstream spotlight but there are still plenty of bands lurking in the shadows who are just as obsessed with the profane and the preternatural. Extreme metal in particular has embraced the evil side of the occult, but here we’re looking at those bands keeping the proto-metal and psychedelic roots of occult rock alive – in spirit if not always precisely in sound.
