IMPERA

グラミー賞2部門にノミネートされた前作『プレクウェル』から約4年振りとなる待望の5thアルバム!

3rdアルバム『Meliora』を手がけたクラス・アーランドを再びプロデューサーに起用!
孤立と半神崇拝、空間と精神の植民地化をテーマに制作され、ゴースト史上最も野心的で抒情的な作品!

昨年ジョン・カーペンターが制作総指揮を務めたショッキング・ホラー映画『ハロウィン KILLS』のエンドロールでバンドとして2年ぶりとなる新曲「Hunter's Moon」を披露、オフィシャル・ミュージック・ビデオには鬼才アマンダ・デミを起用!更に UK/ヨーロッパ・ツアーを"IMPERATOUR"の名で発表!新作への期待は絶好調に達している中、ついに新作のリリースを発表!

Prequelle, Ghosts 2018 album, was disturbingly prescient in its reflection on historic pandemics from the Black Plague to the Spanish Flu. When they abandoned early sessions in April 2020 due to COVID-19, deja-vu must have hit hard. It took another two years to complete Impera, a hook-saturated riff celebration of floor-stomping stadium rock offering equally prescient commentary on the rise and fall of empires. Written during the contentious American presidential election of 2020, it was released during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ghosts wildly flamboyant Cardinal Copia from Prequelle has been appointed Papa Emeritus IV by an unholy see. Frontman and songwriter Tobias Forge was deeply influenced by Timothy H. Parsons book, The Rule of Empires: Those Who Built Them, Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fall. His songs borrow from its themes, ranging across history, mystery, love, hate, pain, death, and transformation, with requisite rock pomp and grandeur. The band re-enlisted producer Klas Ahlund and mixing engineer Andy Wallace (2015s Meliora), while drawing musical inspiration from sources as varied as 80s hair metal, the theatrical rock of Jim Steinman and Andrew Lloyd Webber, and AOR sources from Queen and Metallica to early Judas Priest. The set-opening title track is a cinematic instrumental filled with dual lead guitars (throughout the album guitars are played by Opeths Fredrik Akesson), thundering tom-toms and kick drums, piano, keyboards, and swelling strings. It gives way majestically to "Kaisarion" with an introductory Forge scream. Ghost kicks in with a driving beat (courtesy of drummer Hux Nettermalm) and a massive, chugging hook. Its titled for the son of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, the last Pharoah. "Spillways," the first of five tunes co-written by Forge with Swedish hitmakers Salem al Fakir and Vince Pontare, weds the piano motif in ABBAs "Money, Money, Money" to Bon Jovis "Runaway" (played beautifully by Martin Hederos) inside a bombastic melody worthy of vintage Blue Oyster Cult. "Call Me Little Sunshine" commences with a crunchy vamp that sets up a minor-key, multi-tracked vocal before drums and a booming chorus chant "you will never walk alone...." suggesting 80s Def Leppard. First single, "Hunters Moon," about the empire of childhood, careens across doomy, synth-laden hard rock. "Watcher in the Skies" offers an enormous fist-pumping riff that equates early Rob Zombie and Whitesnake in an intricate melody that joins Boston and Dio, appended by spiky twin-guitar dexterity and sweeping vocals. The stellar power ballad "Darkness at the Heart of My Love" showcases a soaring choir in a lyric and melody that suggests a collaboration between Glenn Danzig and Steinman. In quality it rises to the level of the bands "Dance Macabre." Finale "Respite on Spital Fields," about Jack the Ripper, offers an arrangement that touches on Alice Cooper, Rush, and vintage Nightwish. Impera is the most unabashed exercise in exultant pop/rock sheen Ghost has issued to date; it establishes an exquisite front in their own quest for global rock domination. ~ Thom Jurek