Ghost announced their new Phantomime covers EP over the weekend, featuring heavier renditions of songs from artists like Genesis, Tina Turner, and Television. Though according to Ghost mastermind Tobias Forge, Phantomime was originally meant to be a full album.
In an interview with NME, Forge revealed that Phantomime was meant to be a full covers album that mirrored Impera. The album was set to include covers of Motörhead, Misfits, and Rush songs, but was pared down after Forge decided that he wanted to do an outright rock EP instead. Whether or not those cover songs will eventually be tracked and released is a mystery.
"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.'"
As for the future of Ghost's sound, Forge said Phantomime could "cast a glimpse as to where I want to go with the band now." Though don't expect the band to go full-on into any one of those sounds. "That doesn’t mean that all of a sudden we're going to sound like Television! It just means that there are practical things in there that have inspired me to record this EP in a slightly different way than I have done previously.”
