Skeletour reanimated 1: Opus eponymous
- Elowen Cotter
- May 15
- 3 min read
BY Elowen Cotter
On the 18th of October 2010, a tiny rock band named ghost released their first ever album opus Eponymous on the independent record label rise above records, having no idea what was to come. now, over 15 years later ghost, a once tiny group recording in a basement studio in Linköping have grown to be an award-winning, Theatrical, hard rock band, led by the front man Tobias forge, with currently 6 albums to their name, alongside a handful of eps and singles. Over the next 6 weeks, each Thursday a new article will be released detailing a different era of ghost starting at opus eponymous and ending at skeleta, the bands newest album.
Opus Eponymous
Starting out:
While Ghost's first album, Opus Eponymous was released in 2010 Tobias himself first started writing music for ghost in 2006. AS an amateur musician up until his break, Tobias had been in several bands including but not limited to subdivision, repugnant and Magna Carta Cartel. Unfortunately, none took off like he hoped leaving him as he said quote " at a point of desperation, I was one year into parenthood, facing the fact that, fuck, we need more money. So I decided to do something.” and Tobias did do just that, adding to his list of passion projects writing songs for what would later become ghost. starting first with stand by him which he said quote " this is probably the most heavy metal riff that has ever existed ... When the chorus came to me, it haunted my dreams. Every time I picked up the guitar, I ended up playing that progression, and when I fit the words in, it seemed to cry out for a Satanically-oriented lyric." From there Tobias recruited an old friend of his Gustaf Lindström to help him record this song, with them in early 2008 going on to record in studio two other songs: Death knell and prime mover. After this Tobias would go to remark to his friend "This definitely does not sound like two dudes that look like you and I" thus this led to the decision being made by Tobias that ghost would be an anonymous theatre band, pulling their unique imagery from his love of horror films and Scandinavian metal. Funnily enough at first Tobias forge had no interest in being the bands singer instead wanting to play guitar. But after offering up lead singer to four other people all of whom turned it down he automatically took up this mantle. A little while later Tobias would go on to release the 3 songs, he and Gustaf Lindström had written where, only 2 days later record labels and managers would contact them.
From here ghost would go on quickly to record their first Single, Elizabeth which was released in June of 2010, followed swiftly by their first album Opus eponymous which was released on the 10th of October in the same year. following this the band ghost blew up seemingly overnight with their album reaching number 50 on the Sverigetopplistan (Swedish top music list) as well as being nominated for a grammy for top rock album. There was no other way to say it, ghost was a hit a huge hit. it didn't end there either when only 3 years later ghost released another album...
