Few metal bands have exploded in popularity across the last decade like Ghost. Be it filling out arenas, winning awards or going viral on TikTok, it's seemed like Tobias Forge's spooky party starters are unstoppable right now. Amazingly, in an exclusive interview in the latest issue of Metal Hammer, Forge reveals that the very first Ghost song he wrote wasn't necessarily meant to be taken entirely seriously.
"Ghost started with a song, Stand By Him, which ultimately came out on our first record," he explains. "I wrote it spontaneously, as an experiment – almost a joke, if you will, in 2006. When I recorded it the first time, I had no equipment in my home, so I had to go to a friend’s house. We did this very rough demo. He said it was great. He’d been in Subvision, Repugnant and Crashdïet with me, but we’d stopped playing together. He was like, ‘Can we form a new band?’ and I was like, ‘This song is the only thing I have. If I can come up with two more songs and there’s a pattern, then of course.’ But they needed to be as playful and spontaneous, and sure enough they were.”
