GHOST ARE TEN
Something strange was afoot, but Lee Dorrian wasn’t sure what. It was early 2010 and he had recently signed an intriguing new band named Ghost to his label, Rise Above, and now their frontman and mastermind Tobias Forge wanted money. For a robe.
“At that point I still hadn’t seen what they looked like,” recalls the former Cathedral and Napalm Death singer. “Tobias kept asking for money, which was increasing, for this bespoke robe he needed to have made for a photoshoot. It ended up costing more than the actual shoot itself. I was like, ‘Fucking hell, it better be a decent robe.’”
A curious Lee coughed up the cash and waited, wondering what this secretive musician from the Swedish city of Linköping was up to. “Then the photos came through, the very first photos we’d ever seen. It was like, ‘Fuuuuuck…’”
Post-Slipknot, bands in masks were a dime a dozen, but this was something more sinister. The photographs showed a group of shadowy figures in dark cowls, flanking someone – something – that resembled an undead pope, right down to embroidered mitre, deathly mask and, yes, very expensive robe.
“It was timing, it was ambition, it was a little bit of desperation,” says Tobias Forge of the impact his band would make, not just on his new
