By the time Ghost finished promoting their second album, 2013’s Infestissumam, they’d done everything required to be positioned as future breakout stars. Much like the Devil himself, Tobias Forge’s anti-church were both tempting and dangerous: on the one hand, they made sensual, melodic music inspired as much by Abba as it was by Candlemass. On the other, they dressed like a satanic cult with a skeletal antipope – a combination that both dazzled young listeners and infuriated the mainstream’s older, stuffier gatekeepers.
Ghost were incessantly talked about, fun to hear and disliked by everybody uncool. No way they wouldn’t explode.
