GHOST leader Tobias Forge said he’s anxiously awaiting the return of a pope-like figure as the band’s frontman.
As you may or may now know, the group is currently fronted by Cardinal Copia, the band’s first singer who is not part of the Papa Emeritus bloodline.
Tobias told KLAQ during a recent interview:
“One thing that I’m looking forward to is having a pope back in the lead.
“Because Cardinal Copia is not the leader yet; he’s working his way up. And I’m definitely also looking forward to him possibly becoming the real deal.
“I also miss the skull-painted pope figure… I’m okay with the Cardinal – I think he’s cool – and I guess that’s the idea when you have a protagonist villain; he’s a lot of those things that you’re not, and I regard him the same way – he is a lot of the things that I guess I wish I was…
“We differ quite a lot, him and I. But I’m definitely looking forward to, in the future, where he could also have his additional papal robes. And I think that, given the right production setting, there’s definitely a lot of things that we can do that will be even more theatrical, more gags and more things changing.
“That’s also the part that sometimes is a little bit hard working with a two-hour show – to try to get the stage to appear in different ways. So there’s a lot of things like that that I’m looking forward to exploring in the future. You’ll see.”
During the rest of the conversation, Forge talked about his desire for GHOST to grow as a band and fill larger venues, saying:
“I am constantly working towards coming to a point where we could guarantee any audience that we will put on the same show anywhere, which is another way to say that I’m really working hard for us to play arenas everywhere.
“Because when you’re an arena band, unless it’s your last arena tour and you’re just about to be demoted, usually a show like that will enable you to have a stage, it gives you the size, and it usually also provides some monetary means to give you the funds to do a lot more.
“And one thing that we cannot do in most of these theaters and that’s why we’re not doing it on a regular, every-night basis is pyro, which is something that really annoys the s**t out of me because I really love doing pyro. It really works, it’s really good for the vibe, and we can’t do that in most theaters.
“So for us to have a pyro crew of two people with big boxes of bombs with us on tour, that would be a waste of money. But on the arena shows, we’re flying them in. And I want people everywhere to feel that they’re not getting shortchanged.
“It’s just the nature of the beast – you can’t do it everywhere. But step by step, slowly, slowly, we are taking steps… And the theater shows now are really, really big – the production that we’re bringing is really huge…
“That’s the beauty of arenas – you have space, and you can rig everything and you can blow stuff up; big concrete floor. It’s usually not as charming as an old theater, but the show will be better.”
