There are a LOT of incredible rock bands out there if you take the time to look, Many of the best I’ve come across come from Sweden, There must be something in the water in that country that creates so many gifted musicians. Most of these bands don’t really achieve the level of worldwide success and notoriety that Tobias Forge has amassed with Ghost. Tobias had a fairly broad background in the Swedish rock and metal scene as the founding lead guitarist of the original line up of sleaze legends Crashdiet, the guitarist/ vocalist of the death metal band Repugnant, and fronting the rock band Subvision. All of that you could say were the musical stepping stones to what would become Ghost. Tobias (A.k.a Papa Emeritus) brought a lot of visual and thematic concepts more commonly associated with death metal and fused it with the theatrics of bands like Iron Maiden, KISS, and Alice Cooper. They took the darker ambiance of black metal and combined it with sleaze metal, Classic rock, Black album era Metallica, and the grandiose arena anthems of bands like Queen and Def Leppard.
This band not only plays extremely well but they have catchy as hell songs that are endlessly enjoyable to listen to. In one of the interviews he did while talking about the writing of this album Tobias said he was going for a big area rock sound, Their last album 2018’s Prequelle was already pretty well on that path, So where does Impera stand by comparison? It achieves what it was intended to be, Impera is a sonically massive album that demands to be played in the biggest venue and on the best speakers possible.
“Imperium” starts the album out with a short instrumental, which features some beautiful acoustic picking with an electric solo over it before launching into “Kaisarion” a near Iron Maiden-esque up tempo rocker, They opened the show I went to last month with this song and it was excellent live, the studio version here doesn’t disappoint.
“Spillways” kind of reminds me of “Cold as ice” by Foreigner with a dash of Boston, I’m honestly surprised this song wasn’t a single yet.
The album’s second single “Call me little sunshine” is my favorite single they put out, the guitar tone on this song reminds me of Metallica’s clean sound on “one” but with ghosts lush arrangements.
“Hunter’s moon” would’ve fit well on Prequelle and “Watcher in the sky” sounds somewhat Alice In Chains inpired. “Twenties” sounds somewhere between the soundtrack to a world war 2 era movie and Ghost’s song “Mummy dust” .
“Darkness at the heart of my love” is my favorite song on the album, gorgeous finger picking acoustic guitar playing during the verses sound reminiscent of a 60’s folk ballad and a very catchy mid tempo rock chorus.
“Griftwood” reminds me a bit of a slightly heavier version of Kansas, It’s a very catchy song that is another of my top favorites on Impera.
The album closes with “Respite on the spitalfields” another mid tempo song with beautiful melodies and harmonies. One thing I have to note here is just how gorgeous the instrumentation here is, expertly composed and tone to die for. I love how this band refuses to be formulaic and brings new evolution with each album, Impera takes the better elements of Prequelle and Meliora and evolves it to the next level, Impera is vibrant and grand. From start to finish an incredible album that takes you on a thrilling musical journey. If I have any critique to give here it’s that the second and third instrumentals on this album functioned more as a lead in to the song that followed each and really didn’t need to be individual tracks in my opinion. Musically this is Ghost on the next level and Impera is an album that shouldn’t be missed.