Ghost Wins at The Grammis
Written by Monty Sewell on May 4, 2023
‘Impera’ Claims The Best Hard Rock/Metal Award
A very unusual sighting was seen at the Swedish Grammis last night. Ghost, the Swedish born band whose award winning album recently sold 70,000 equivalent units in the U.S. in its first week of release took to to the stage in… normal attire. The death soaked face paint and provocatively religious uniform was gone and the kind words were in as they accepted their trophy for Best Hard Rock/Metal award. Tobias Forge, or more commonly – and lovingly – known as ‘Papa Emeritus’, gave thanks to those who were involved in the albums fruition with his full team of brilliant Ghost musicians joining him onstage.
Ghost
“For some reason I thought this would happen earlier in the evening. When I realised it would happen a bit later.. as you know, it takes a lot of teamwork to make a record, everything from getting the record together sonically to getting it out in physical form,” Forge continued in his mother tongue, “I’ve worked with a lot of people and halfway through this evening, I realised, ‘Fuck we haven’t been mentioned yet. Our category hasn’t been mentioned! I’m gonna be way too drunk!’ So I told Klas — Klas Åhlund, producer of our record — that if we win anything, we should get up here together because it would be difficult to remember everyone that’s been part of it. So, some of the people who have helped us: Klas Åhlund, Salem Al Fakir, Vincent Pontare, Max Grahn… and a whole lot of other people. Everyone from Universal, Nicholas, Christian, BMG, Live Nation has been there and helped us so much. Thank you very much everyone who has been involved.”
Beating out Arch Enemy, Watain, Amon Amarth and The Halo Effect they honoured their fifth record ‘Impera’ with a wonderfully humorous grace. Landing at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 it marked the third top 10 album for the Swedish act who ran a successful arena tour in the UK last year. ‘Impera’ also charged at No. 1 in Sweden and Germany and N o. 2 in the UK, Norway, Belgium and Netherlands. Ghost are currently preparing for their North American tour with fellow Swedes Amon Amarth as support.
