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The 50 most evil songs ever

These 50 tracks – featuring the likes of Rammstein, Slipknot, Mayhem, Slayer and AC/DC – are pretty damn nasty.

November 24, 2020Words:Paul Brannigan, James Hickie, Sam Law, Nick Ruskell, Dan Slessor, Paul Travers, Ian Winwood, Simon YoungOriginally published:In an April 2017 issue of Kerrang! magazine

From serial killers to Satan, we pulled out the ouija board and summoned the 50 most evil songs of all time. Spoiler alert: this gets incrediblygrim…

Mötley CrüeShout At The Devil

The title-track from Crüe’s breakthrough second album caused the kind of controversy that would define the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band. Penned by bassist Nikki Sixx, its lyrical preoccupation with the horned one, coupled with the LA bad boys’ burgeoning mainstream success, meant Christian groups were up in arms. Despite their protestations, the most evil thing about this song was the misguided re-reworking on 1997’s sinfully bad Generation Swine album.

WatainDevil’s Blood

Nothing less than an open hymn to the Devil himself and doing his dirtiest deeds, Devil’s Blood boils with the fanatical delight of those caught in religious fervour. The sheer force of nature of the music is staggering, but it is nothing next to Erik Danielsson’s rabid, demonic vocals as he revels in Luciferian power and living, ‘In the glorious light of the five point star.’ Truly diabolic.

PossessedThe Exorcist

When The Exorcist hit cinemas in the early ’70s, reports of audience members vomiting and losing consciousness circulated. So it’s only right that a song of the same name evokes teeth-chattering terror in those exposed to it. Written from the point of view of the possessed individual, and welded to breakneck thrashing, it was a formative track in the soon-to-be-born death metal genre. Unfortunately, things don’t end so well for the song’s protagonist.

Sonic Youth (featuring Lydia Lunch)Death Valley ’69

The 1980s were the age of the music video, a time of glossy movie-budget promo blockbusters from the likes of Michael Jackson and Prince. Not so for Sonic Youth. As a standalone song, Death Valley ’69 is intriguingly ambiguous, a thing of darkness in which the narrator may or may not have murdered his girlfriend. In the accompanying video clip, never to be played on primetime MTV, the song’s inherent violence is given full expression in a series of explicit images of lifeless bodies covered in gore. A thrillingly subversive dose of yuk.

GhostRitual

If the Devil were real would he be banging his horned head to the brutal death metal of Deicide or sipping a cocktail and twirling an exquisite mustachio to the altogether slicker sounds of Ghost? On first listen this is just one beautiful wash of melodies, but that only makes the lyrics underneath all the more disturbing. ‘This chapel of ritual smells of dead human sacrifices,’ croons Papa Emeritus. The stench of decay has never been sweeter.

The BeatlesHelter Skelter

In August 1969, homicidal cult-leader Charles Manson (you’ll hear that name plenty down this list…) told his followers, known as ‘The Family’, “Now is the time for Helter Skelter,” an assertion that heralded the most infamous mass murders – the Tate-LaBianca murders – in American history. He had become obsessed with The Beatles’ White Album, and with Helter Skelter in particular, the lyrics of which he misinterpreted in bonkers and ultimately homicidal ways.

Aphrodite’s ChildThe Four Horsemen

Greek proggers Aphrodite’s Child – featuring crooner Demis Roussos and Blade Runner soundtrack genius Vangelis – had big ideas for their 666 album: the apocalypse itself. This account of The Four Horsemen’s arrival is amazing, but it could have been improved if surrealist artist Salvador Dalí had gotten his way with the album’s release. He wanted to declare martial law in Barcelona, where swans stuffed with dynamite would be unleashed, before elephants and “Archbishops carrying umbrellas” bombarded the city’s cathedral from the air. Oddly, this didn’t come to pass.

Electric WizardWe Hate You

Electric Wizard’s Dopethrone album bears the striking slogan ‘Legalise drugs and murder’. The Dorset doom misanthropes may have been grouped with the groovy vibes of the stoner rock scene, but lines like ‘So I’ll take my father’s gun and I’ll walk down to the street / I’ll have my vengeance now with everyone I meet’ were a long way away from songs about shagging and cars. It’s a truly nasty sentiment, but as an indiscriminate spray of bile against everyone, this is untouchable.

The Devil’s BloodThe Anti-Kosmik Magick

(The Time Of No Time Evermore, 2009)

“They warned me Satan would be attractive,” quoth Ned Flanders upon being offered legal marijuana. Indeed, at first listen, Dutch diabolists The Devil’s Blood sound like the coolest ’70s-revival band you’ve ever heard. But, covered in blood, treating gigs as rituals and with heavy occult lyrics, The Anti-Kosmik Magick finds them tricking you into loving Lucifer without realising it. Seductive, rather than aggressive, this is temptation and sin presented in all its decadent glory.

AC/DCNight Prowler

On the evening of March 17, 1985, 25-year-old Texan drifter Richard Ramirez broke into the California homes of Tsai-Lian Yu and Dayle Okazaki and murdered both women. Dayle’s roommate Maria Hernandez was also shot in the face by Ramirez, but survived, and provided police with a pen portrait of a young man wearing an AC/DC baseball cap. It would be a further five months, however, before Ramirez, dubbed the ‘Night Stalker’, was apprehended, bringing to an end a 14-month reign of terror in the Golden State during which a total of 13 people were murdered and 11 more sexually assaulted in their own homes.

Ramirez’s childhood friend Ray Garcia subsequently told the authorities that the killer was obsessed by AC/DC, and specifically the creepy, chilling, voyeuristic closing track on the band’s 1979 Highway To Hell album, Night Prowler, leading to sensationalist media headlines such as “‘AC/DC Music Made Me Kill At 16’, Night Stalker Admits.” The Australian band were understandably horrified at the implication, with vocalist Brian Johnson (who joined the band after the song’s recording) telling VH1 television, “It sickens you to have anything to do with that kind of thing.” In the same Behind The Music special, AC/DC guitarist Malcolm Young claimed that Night Prowler is actually about “things you used to do when you are a kid, like sneaking into a girlfriend’s bedroom when her parents were asleep”, but lyrics such as ‘No-one’s gonna warn you / And no-one’s gonna yell attack / And you don’t feel the steel / Till it’s hangin’ out your back’ rather undermined the idea that this was merely a paean to adolescent horniness.

In court, Ramirez played up to his monstrous image, greeting the courtroom with the words “Hail Satan” and telling the judge, “I am beyond good and evil. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells in us all.” After a four-year trial, Ramirez received 19 death sentences for his crimes, a punishment he shrugged off with the words, “Big deal… I’ll see you in Disneyland.” AC/DC naturally distanced themselves completely from the serial killer, but shaking off the association with what is undoubtedly their darkest, nastiest song would prove impossible.

HellhammerTriumph Of Death

Hellhammer mainman Tom G. Warrior has described his childhood in nightmarish terms. Living in a rural Swiss village with an unfit mother who was frequently absent smuggling jewellery, he started playing music to get away from it all. But imagine if this near-10 minute dirge of funereal guitar was what you did to escape. Every negative human emotion is vomited up in Tom’s strangled vocals, and when a couple of years later Tom asked the lyrical question of ‘Are you morbid?’, his answer was already a horrifying ‘yes’.

DissectionNight’s Blood

When thinking of ‘evil’ the words ‘Satan’ and ‘murder’ come quickly to mind. Put those two together and you stumble into territory Dissection inhabited in the mid-’90s, with band leader Jon Nödtveidt and an accomplice jailed for murdering a man who had allegedly expressed an interest in Satanism. Night’s Blood was given its unholy birth two years prior to that incident, and it’s hard not to feel unsettled by the gleeful bloodlust haunting it.

BehemothChristians To The Lions

Having released seminal albums titled Satanica and The Satanist, you can be fairly sure that everything Behemoth do is pretty damn evil, and mainman Nergal’s abuse of the Bible has landed him in Polish courts on more than one occasion. That being the case, it’s unlikely that this ditty went down overly well with churchgoers. Backed up with the band’s inimitable blackened death savagery, Nergal makes it clear which side of the God/Satan divide he falls on, viciously celebrating the death of the former and rise of the latter.

DarkthroneIn The Shadow Of The Horns

A Blaze In The Northern Sky marked a dark watershed for the black metal genre. Eerily pre-emptive of the spree of church-burnings that would go on to hallmark the genre it might’ve been. But Darkthrone’s second LP was, in actuality, fixated on the primal evils of the past. Its howling second track would prove definitive. Seven minutes of defiant lo-fi production, frostbitten purpose and blunt-force simplicity, In The Shadow Of The Horns still sounds like “abyssic hate” incarnate.

Cradle Of FilthDeath Magick For Adepts

Always ones for adding theatrics to their music, here Dani Filth paints a picture of a Sodom and Gomorrah scenario with no small amount of skill. But how to really bring out the hellish chaos erupting all around? You get one of Hell’s stewards to lend their terrifying voice to the track. That is to say, Hellraiser actor Doug Bradley, whose performance makes you worried to look out your window, lest you see Hell emptying itself onto the lawn.

Guns N’ RosesLook At Your Game, Girl

(The Spaghetti Incident?, 1993)

There aren’t many songs that have been released in order to help pay for the legal defence costs of its author who is facing a multiple murder rap. Originally written in 1967 and released on the album Lie: The Love And Terror Cult, Look At Your Game, Girl is the work of Charles Manson. Twenty-three years after its original 1970 release, the always provocative Guns N’ Roses placed the song as a hidden track on their covers album The Spaghetti Incident?. “People are trying to paint me like I worship Charles Manson,” said Axl Rose in 1994, “but it’s exactly the opposite of that.”

AkercockeOf Menstrual Blood And Semen

��Blast For Satan’ ran the slogan on Akercocke’s shirts. It was a statement that summed up the intensity of both their music and their allegiance to Him downstairs. With their Savile Row suits and mysterious manner, they gave the air of men who actually dabbled in the black arts, something reinforced by their instruction to ‘drink of the chalice of ecstasy’ here. This furious concoction is as intense as metal gets, while also revelling in the decadence of the band’s beliefs.

BathoryCall From The Grave

Across their first trilogy of albums, Sweden’s Bathory redefined just how evil metal could sound. Crudely welding the darkness of Black Sabbath to the roar of Motörhead, the sound mainman Quorthon came up with could freeze blood, and nowhere more so than on Call From The Grave. With all the atmosphere of a freshly-dug burial site at midnight, the diabolic, two-chord riff and Quorthon’s demented vocals make this a haunting paean to all things evil and hellish.

DeicideOnce Upon The Cross

As you would expect from a man who once branded an inverted cross into his forehead, Deicide’s Glen Benton has no problem with blasphemy. Here, he mocks Jesus Christ’s struggle as he dies on the cross, which tied in really well with album Once Upon The Cross’ original artwork, which features Jesus with his insides on the outside. Oddly, this was considered too salty for the public.

Jimmy PageLucifer Rising

So obsessed was Jimmy Page with occultist and ‘Wickedest Man In The World’ Aleister Crowley that he bought the Scottish residence, Boleskine House, where the magician had attempted (and failed) to perform a six-month long magic ritual. The Zeppelin guitarist was therefore the perfect choice to soundtrack Lucifer Rising, a Crowley-inspired film by occult director Kenneth Anger. When after years, Jimmy’s contribution was still incomplete, he was acrimoniously removed from the project. Regardless, this bizarre music remains the most unsettling the man has ever created.

Big BlackJordan, Minnesota

Tiny Midwestern town Jordan, Minnesota entered the national consciousness in the U.S. in the mid-’80s when a number of school children claimed to have been ritually abused and to have witnessed multiple murders perpetrated by more than 20 townsfolk. The hysterical media coverage prompted Big Black’s Steve Albini to write this disturbing, pitch-black indictment of small-town corruption and perversion, complete with heavy breathing and lyrics such as, ‘This is Jordan, we do what we like.’ Ultimately, the accusations were dismissed as pure fabrication, but the song remains a horrifying and sickening dissection of humanity’s darkest impulses.

Robert JohnsonCross Road Blues

Legend has it that Cross Road Blues is about a highway intersection in the city of Rosedale, where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his musical talent. While this classic song’s lyrics make no mention of this shady Faustian pact, the song – most likely about making the choice between good and evil – fuelled the myth of the Delta blues legend, who made references to the Devil during many of his songs. Plot twist: Robert died under mysterious circumstances aged just 27 years old.

Alkaline TrioThis Could Be Love

While many other popular punk bands of the time were singing songs about farting and penises, the always cut-above Alkaline Trio cast their gaze on darker matters. This Could Be Love is a tale of murder, the twist in which lies in the fact that it is told from the victim’s point of view. It’s grizzly stuff, too, with soiled beds, scenes of torture, delirious joy at acts of violence and the arresting image of a crazed lover washing blood from her hands in the waters of Lake Michigan. As audio-nasties go, this is a superior offering.

CarcassCadaveric Incubator Of Endoparasites

Dying sucks, but Carcass have done a bang-up job of making you hope to be vaporised at your moment of death by luridly detailing the process of decomposition. It’s hard to compute just how unsettling the Liverpudlian’s lyrics were, and it’s safe to presume that someone with delicate sensibilities raised on a diet of Madonna could well be revisited by the contents of their stomach after exposure to this belch of aural horror.

Nine Inch NailsPiggy

Despite appearing on The Downward Spiral, an album chronicling the destruction of man, Piggy isn’t necessarily evil in and of itself. It’s the context in which the song was created that makes it truly unsettling.

In 1992, Trent Reznor scrapped his original plan to record the follow-up to Nine Inch Nails’ debut Pretty Hate Machine in New Orleans, decamping instead to 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles’ Benedict Canyon. It was here in 1969 that actress Sharon Tate (the pregnant wife of director Roman Polanski) and four others were brutally murdered by the Charles Manson ‘family’. Although Trent suggests he only discovered the address’ grisly history after he’d decided to record there – claiming it was chosen for the suitability of the space – he subsequently read up on the incident, suggesting ‘The Tate House’ “didn’t feel terrifying as much as sad.” Despite the sense of melancholy, Trent would use it to record 1992’s Broken EP, The Downward Spiral and Marilyn Manson’s debut album, Portrait Of An American Family, which Trent produced.

The song’s title has been the subject of speculation. Former live guitarist Richard Patrick, who would later form the band Filter, has suggested he was once given the nickname ‘Piggy’, while The Beatles’ song Piggies was said to have had considerable influence on Charles Manson. Despite Trent redubbing the address ‘Le Pig’, a reference to the word that was written in blood on the front door by the murderers – and The Downward Spiral also featuring a song called March Of The Pigs – Trent denies either was directly related to what had taken place at the site of their makeshift studio.

In a sobering postscript, Trent ended up meeting Sharon Tate’s sister. She asked him about whether he thought he was exploiting her sister’s death – an encounter Trent admits caused him to breakdown, having suddenly seen things from her perspective.

Cannibal CorpseFrantic Disembowelment

No-one pens gleeful murder and mayhem anti-anthems like Cannibal Corpse, and those taking the time to read the lyric sheet often wish they hadn’t eaten beforehand. Famously stirring up controversy with both their lyrics and artwork in the late-’80s and early-’90s, CC have never once modulated their approach to making horrifying music, and Frantic Disembowelment has to stand as the pinnacle of their nastiness. What’s it about? The title makes it pretty clear, and nowhere will you find a more graphic description of innards becoming ‘outtards’.

Jane’s AddictionTed, Just Admit It

The track opens with a quote from American serial killer Ted Bundy (a man who kept severed heads as trophies), recorded shortly before his 1989 execution and wrapped up in off-kilter jazzy beats. “There’s gonna be people turning up in canyons, there are gonna be people being shot in Salt Lake City. Because the police there aren’t willing to accept, what I think they know. And they know I didn’t do these things,” he claims. The rest of it is hardly easy listening with frontman Perry Farrellintoning ‘Sex is violent’ over and over again like a man possessed.

SlipknotIowa

How do you end one of the most bleak albums in history? By recording a 15-minute doom jam that hints at necrophilia. Corey Taylor – who describes the Iowa album as the “darkest fucking period” of his life – explores the mind of a man who finds himself alone with a corpse: ‘You are mine / You will always be mine / I can tear you apart / I can recombine you.’ And to really get into that fucked-up mindset, he sang naked and cut himself with broken glass. The screams you hear on the song are quite real.

BlasphemyRitual

There are many rumours about Canada’s Blasphemy, none greater than the ones concerning their activities in Alberta’s Ross Bay cemetery. A place with a long history of satanic goings on, legend has it that the band carried out satanic rituals, desecrations and headstone theft on the site (supposedly the stone was returned after guitarist Black Priest Of The 7 Satanic Blood Rituals suffered demonic attacks). It would certainly explain Ritual’s suffocating darkness.

AbruptumObscuritatem Advoco Amplecetere Me Part 1

Euronymous from Mayhem once described Sweden’s Abruptum as “the audial essence of pure black evil”. As 20-ish minutes of raw, evil noise rather than a song, Obscuritatem… is certainly dark. Especially considering that the screaming sounds you hear are apparently band members IT and Evil violently torturing one another. True or not, this is diabolic stuff.

Alice CooperI Love The Dead

In his time, Alice Cooper caused outrage with the theatrics of his live show and songs like this tender track about stiffs. ‘I love the dead before they rise / No farewells, no goodbyes / I never even knew your now-rotting face,’ he crooned, prompting calls for a UK tour to be banned. MP Leo Abse accused the singer of “peddling the culture of the concentration camp”, adding, “Pop is one thing, anthems of necrophilia are quite another.”

Mercyful FateMelissa

The character of Melissa was a witch who was burned at the stake. She appeared a number of times throughout Mercyful Fate’s career, but here, on the metallers’ debut, it was to inspire her lover to seek out satanic revenge. The initial inspiration for the song came from a skull that frontman King Diamond (more on him soon) ‘acquired’ from a medical school. It had suffered a brutal injury, and the name Melissa came to the singer as he stared at it. Melissa also formed part of the stage set until she was stolen at a gig.

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Morbid AngelBleed For The Devil

If that title doesn’t tell you what side death metal legends Morbid Angel’s bread was buttered, how about the photo in the Altars Of Madness album sleeve of guitar wizard Trey Azagthoth shredding while bleeding profusely, looking as though he’s playing for the Great Horned One himself. Or you could just listen to the demented musical maze with lyrics literally attempting to summon Lucifer, and realise that whatever Morbid Angel were doing in the studio, they did not learn it at Sunday school.

Ozzy OsbourneMr Crowley

When Ozzy Osbourne was fired from Black Sabbath in 1979, many wondered whether he’d be able to muster the same dark magic again. Just a year later, people got their answer in the form of debut solo album Blizzard Of Ozz. Mr Crowley, its second single, refers to legendary occultist Aleister Crowley, who founded the religion of Thelema and considered himself a prophet. Dramatic stuff; so it’s a good thing it’s got a grandiose organ intro – and guitarist Randy Rhoads on monumental form.

MisfitsMommy, Can I Go Out And Kill Tonight?

We’d love to hear Freud’s take on Glenn Danzig’s colourful relationship with his mother. Before the diminutive behemoth’s maternally-titled solo smash he penned this ditty for the Misfits about a student driven to homicidal mania by his playground tormentors. But only if ‘Mommy’ says he’s allowed, obviously. Captured raw, the serrated tape-deck live recording only adds to the unhinged bloodlust. And packed like a meat locker with lurid promises to ‘rip the veins from human necks’ we can’t see how Glenn’s old lady could’ve possibly refused…

CovenSatanic Mass

Released in 1969, the same year U.S. occultist Anton LaVey published The Satanic Bible, Coven’s Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls album was the perfect soundtrack to the hippie movement taking a step down the left-hand path. Following nine tracks of Satan-themed psych, it closes with this, an actual satanic mass, conducted by the band. Even if you think it’s hokum, it’s hard to get to the end without feeling weird.

VenomBlack Metal

These days somewhat overlooked, more than any other band Newcastle upon Tyne’s Venom were the chief progenitors of metal’s most bloodthirsty subgenre, thrash metal. Couplets such as ‘Freaking so wild / Nobody’s mild’ may suggest the aid of a rhyming dictionary, but either way Black Metal would prove to be wildly influential on a range of young American musicians with a taste for the extreme. The track has been covered by no fewer than 11 different bands, and is loved by musicians as disparate as Dave Grohl and Kerry King.

Judas PriestBetter By You, Better Than Me

Can a cover of a bouncy ’60s pop song really be evil? According to a couple of grieving parents and their lawyers it can, and in 1990 Rob Halford and the boys were hauled into court over it. With hidden, subliminal messages allegedly buried in the song, which supposedly inspired two fans to shoot themselves, the trial itself was quickly sensationalised by the media. Though the charges were ultimately dismissed, the judge insisted there were such messages on there, though not necessarily powerful enough to incite suicidal actions. Stealth evil, maybe?

Celtic FrostProcreation (Of The Wicked)

Easily one of the most evil bands of their time – and essential to the evolution of extreme metal – Celtic Frost could conjure images of the Devil with a single chord. However, never did they sound more monstrous than on this brutish tune. Lurching along on a hulking riff and with twisted lyrics that scare Christians and excite all those who reject religion (‘If God raised the abyss, you’d procreate your own / Abolism of death is abolism of life’), this is music gloriously devoid of anything that could be considered ‘good’. Sepultura’s take on the track also stands amongst the best metal covers ever.

Killing JokeExorcism

This is a piece of ritualistic industrial-metal primal force that was recorded in the Great Pyramid Of Giza after Killing Joke allegedly bribed the Egyptian Minister For Antiquities for access. “Our engineer fell asleep in the King’s Chamber,” frontman Jaz Coleman told Kerrang! of the sessions. “He suddenly had some vision, sprang up, banged his head and ran out screaming. After this he said he’d never go back in again. He said there were thousands of alien eyes staring at him, and after that he had a stroke. It affected him, the place…”

King DiamondThe Family Ghost

King Diamond is no stranger to strangeness.

“I’ve had a ton of supernatural experiences. I feel like I brought something back with me from the operation [a triple heart bypass in which he nearly died] but I was having supernatural experiences long before that,” he says.

Many of these real-life experiences have been channelled into his music, both with Mercyful Fate and his self-named outfit. The Family Ghost might just be the only song to have incorporated an element of the supernatural into its very recording, however.

The song is a crucial part of King Diamond’s classic horror concept album, Abigail. The story for the album, which involves murder, possession and dark family secrets, came to King in a dream on a suitably stormy night.

“I woke up during a thunderstorm in my haunted apartment in Copenhagen and I had this story in my head. It was also influenced by my own family history. My mom told me how she was left on someone’s doorstep and she later found out she was the child of a professor’s son. He got my grandmother pregnant and she was sent away to have this child. That was all sort of wound into this story,” the singer explains.

On The Family Ghost, protagonist Jonathan La’Fey is warned by the ghost of his ancestor that his wife is carrying the vengeful spirit of the stillborn Abigail and that he must kill her in order to stop the rebirth.

Even spookier than the story is an unexpected and unexplained addition to the recording that may or may not have originated from somewhere beyond the grave.

“There’s a vocal part on The Family Ghost that I never recorded,” explains King. “It’s a part that goes, (adopts bestial growl) ‘Ohhhh damn,’ and we couldn’t find it on any of the tracks anywhere. I have no clue what it was, but it’s certainly not the only weird or even seemingly impossible thing to happen to us.”

Sunn O)))Báthory Erzsébet

What could be more evil than a song jointly inspired by black metal progenitors Bathory and the 16th century serial killer Elizabeth Báthory – who reputedly bathed in the blood of virgins – from whom they took their name? Perhaps one that also consisted of 16 minutes of tortuous drone and bleak lyrics like, ‘Decompose forever, aware and unholy, encased in marble and honey from the swarm.’ Oh, and legend has it the band locked claustrophobic guest vocalist Malefic from occult metal act Xasthur in a casket to make his performance more anguished.

DanzigMother

‘Mother…’ Don’t warble it, we dare you. Glenn Danzig’s post-Misfits mega-hit has gained such ubiquity, it’s easy to overlook its evil underpinnings. Peel away a million hoarse-throated rock club sing-alongs, however, and it’s still devilishly apparent. A tongue-in-cheek cautionary tale targeted squarely at Tipper Gore, the (parental advisory committee) PMRC and 1988’s other moral crusaders, its promise of a scene ‘not about to see your light’ pierced the mainstream like a sacrificial dagger. Chuck in the MTV-banned music video (animal sacrifice and inverted-crosses smeared bloodily onto nubile torsos = bad press, apparently) and we’ve got probably the most subversive song of its era.

SlayerAngel Of Death

Given that their entire oeuvre revolves around war, murder and general unspeakable wickedness, finding evil Slayer songs is hardly difficult: in fact, it’d be significantly more of a challenge to identify songs by the LA thrash metal pioneers that aren’t rooted in despicable, debased acts of inhumanity. That said, while the likes of Dead Skin Mask (based on the exploits of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein), Jihad (‘Fuck your God!’) and Necrophiliac (erm…) are gruesome and terrifying in equal measure, it’s the notorious opening track of the masterfully malevolent Reign In Blood album which will forever remain the Californian band’s most noxious and black-hearted artistic statement.

Perhaps the most chilling aspect of Jeff Hanneman’s lyrics detailing Nazi physician Josef Mengele’s abhorrent experiments on patients at the Auschwitz concentration camp (‘Burning flesh drips away / Test of heat burns your skin / Your mind starts to boil / Frigid cold, cracks your limbs / How long can you last in this frozen water burial?’) is the fact that they’re so clinical, unemotional and detached, leading to accusations that the band were glorifying the horrors. The controversy actually led to Columbia Records, the distributors for producer Rick Rubin’s Def Jam label, to insist that the track be removed from the album, a demand which both the band and their label boss flatly refused. Ultimately, the label washed their hands of the release, leading Rick to take it to Geffen Records instead.

Jeff always denied accusations that the song exhibited Nazi sympathies, calling it “a history lesson”. “There’s nothing I put in the lyrics that says necessarily he was a bad man, because to me – well, isn’t that obvious?” he stated, not unreasonably. His guitar partner Kerry King was even more brusque, saying, “Read the lyrics and tell me what’s offensive about it?” The band’s lack of repentance is understandable, but it’d be a dead soul indeed who can listen without flinching at the visceral horror.

Diamond HeadAm I Evil?

‘My mother was a witch,’ barked Diamond Head frontman Sean Harris in 1980, lighting a fire under the fledgeling NWOBHM genre, ‘She was burned alive!’ Fusing the occult themes of Black Sabbath to the ragged energy of early punk, the Midlands metallers laid a proto-thrash template that’d be picked up by Metallica (who famously covered the song as a B-side for Creeping Death), Megadeth and Slayer. For all those bands’ stadium-packing pedigree, though, there’s still something untouchably (im)pure about the original. ‘Am I evil?’ came Sean’s immortal question. ‘Yes I am!’

Iron MaidenThe Number Of The Beast

It seems strange to recall, but in the U.S. in the 1980s heavy metal often found itself under assault from religious groups convinced that the genre served as a Trojan Horse for the enslavement of the nation’s youth in the name of Satan. Few songs fostered this misbelief as resoundingly as The Number Of The Beast. Iron Maiden helped fan the flames of the song’s reputation by reporting various strange goings-on in the recording studio, while protests and album burnings greeted them when they headed Stateside for a 1982 tour.

RammsteinWeiner Blut

Rammstein have always courted controversy, and 2009 album Liebe Ist Für Alle Da proved to be no exception. It was initially added to Germany’s Federal Department For Media Harmful To Young Persons index, partly for the sadomasochistic song Ich Tu Dir Weh. The real darkness, however, can be found in Wiener Blut. The song is a first-person retelling of the evil perpetrated by Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned and abused his daughter in the basement of their home for 24 years. That’s all you need to know.

Black SabbathBlack Sabbath

Bassist Geezer Butler once painted his home black and hung inverted crosses and pictures of the Devil on the walls and claims that he saw a “black shape” by his bed after reading a book about witchcraft. The incident inspired one of metal’s most potently evil songs, which opens with a thunderstorm and ominous church bell and is propelled by that tritone riff – a collection of notes named diabolus in musica – which guitarist Tony Iommi describes as “really evil and very doomy”. Indeed, this six-minute song birthed an entire genre. Thanks, mysterious intruder.

MayhemFreezing Moon

By the time Freezing Moon was released on the De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas album, Mayhem’s legacy was already the darkest of any group in history. Two people were dead, one by his own hand, while a third person was serving a 21-year jail sentence for the murder of the other. Late Mayhem guitarist Øystein ‘Euronymous’ Aarseth had often spoken about the need for greater extremity and more evil in black metal. At great expense, he got it.

Two versions of Freezing Moon exist. The first remained unreleased for years, and was one of only two recordings of vocalist Dead (Per Yngve Ohlin), a young Swede who had moved to Norway to join Mayhem. A depressive boy who often spoke of a near-death experience as a child, he would talk about suicide in disarmingly casual tones. For early gigs, he would bury his stage clothes underground and smell dead birds in plastic bags. His lyrics for Freezing Moon were unsurprisingly morbid – ‘Everything here is so cold / Everything here is so dark… I remember it was here I died’ – while his vocal performance was unhinged and chilling.

He would never see it released, however. On April 8, 1991, aged just 22, Dead took his own life in the house he shared with the rest of the band. Euronymous, discovering the body, took photos and collected skull fragments to send to friends as necklaces, before calling the police.

Work continued on what would be Mayhem’s debut full-length, with Burzum’s Varg Vikernes enlisted to play bass, and a Hungarian singer, Attila Csihar, drafted in to replace Dead. Following the recording in early ’93, Attila returned to Hungary. What he would next hear from Norway was unthinkable: in the early hours of August 10, 1993, Varg stabbed Euronymous to death in his apartment. He was arrested and sentenced to 21 years.

The song itself, with its chilling, minor-chord intro where icy notes hang like corpses in the gallows, its scything main riff and demonic atmosphere, already showcased perfectly black metal’s musical abyss. But with so much genuine darkness behind it – killer and victim playing together, despite Euronymous’ parents’ request that Varg’s parts be wiped – it now stands as a chilling document of perhaps the most horrifying time in the history of music.

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Nine Inch NailsSlipknotGuns N' RosesIron MaidenRammsteinGhostBlack SabbathMisfitsSlayerBehemothMötley CrüeAC/DCElectric WizardThe MisfitsMayhemWatainHellhammerDanzigPossessedDiamond Head

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lanottedellastrega · 7 months ago

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Man, I haven't done a transcript in a while...

Editor's Letter: GHOULS ON FILM

Tobias Forge has always been wildly ambitious. After throwing everything at Ghost in his last real shot as a professional musician, he established the band as an occult-rock force you couldn't look away from, all shady Nameless Ghouls and papal vestments. As the years rolled by, Tobias might have unmasked, but the Ghost legend has only grown. Back at their early gigs in 2010, few could have predicted they'd have their own actual movie in 2024. Like everything Ghost do, Rite Here Rite Now has been kept tightly under wraps, but Tobias was kind enough to grant our Paul Brannigan an audience, and reveal the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to such a triumph of creativity. And if you're reading this letter on June 20, the day the magazine goes on sale and the day the film premieres, you're probably about to experience his vision for yourself. "This is not a tale about death, but one of life…" intones the voicover on Rite Here Rite Now's spooktacular, schlock'n'roll trailer. While we can't say for certain if Papa IV will survive in his current form, we certainly hope Ghost are around to entertain us for a long time to come.

Stay metal, Eleanor Goodman, Editor

RITES. CAMERA. ACTION! From dancing ghouls to…dead Papas? Tobias forge takex us behind the scenes of Rite Here Rite Now, Ghost's new movie spectacular. Words: Paul Brannigan - Lives: Ryan Chang - Portraaits: Travis Shinn

[Accompanying photo: two-page spread of the Forum Ritual, taken during Con Clavi Con Dio, with Papa downstage center holding the thurible. Caption: "Everything Ghost do is BIG. We expect no less from the film"]

Last year, in case you didn't notice, those "hands that threaten doom" which Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson once sang about, inched 10 seconds closer to midnight. The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the people who created the Doomsday Clock back in 1947 to gauge how close humanity is to destroying the world, reset the minute hand for the 25th time since its creation, moving it closer to the hour than it has ever been. So the prospect of imminent global catastrophe is now ever more pronounced, which, to be honest, is something of a bummer.

"We are approaching the end of an era. So let's have a good time." It was with these equally doom-laden words that Papa Emeritus IV, Ghost's puckish frontman, welcomed the faithful to the Kia Forum in Los Angeles on September 11 last year, for the first of two 'rituals' bringing the Re-Imperatour USA 2023 tour to a close. For those in attendance, the weight of those words hung heavily in the air.

In February last year, news that a second night at the 17,500-capacity venue had been added to the end of the Swedish band's tour schedule, after the first show sold out, was delivered in Chapter 16 of the occult rock collective's web series. The episode, titled Tax Season, was accompanied by a message from "The Clergy" stating, "We wish to inform you that in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes."

The clip itself featured none-too-subtle hints that Papa Emeritus IV may not be long for this world; at one point, while he's playing a retro racing video game, he's distracted by the sight of a glass coffin being wheeled past his door, and when his attention returns to his TV screen, the words 'Game Over!!!!!!' appear. In Ghost world, where every symbol is scrutinised to the nth degree by the faithful, this was interpreted as a warning that the writing was on the wall for this Papa in the City of Angels. And when it was revealed that the group's two-night stand at the Forum was to be filmed for a future film release, with all phones to be confiscated from patrons upon entry, we feared the worst.

Hammer duly dispatched Associate Editor Dave Everley to Los Angeles to bear witness to what promised to be the gravest chapter yet in Ghost's evolution. At the conclusion of the second night at the Forum, however, Papa IV - "channelling the ghosts of Freddie Mercury and vintage Willy Wonka", Dave noted - was still standing, indeed dancing…but there was a lingering suspicion that there was more to be revealed.

Then, on May 1 this year, came a new message: the announcement that Rite Here Rite Now, Ghost's debut feature film, chronicling the events in Los Angeles, would be screened in cinemas worldwide on June 20 and 22. And those studying the minutiae of the film poster observed that the letter "o" in the final word of the title had been substituted for an analogue clock, its hands positioned at - and you might be ahead of us here - two minutes to midnight. Well, well, well…

"The Doomsday Clock is not an actual clock - it's more of a measuring tool for us to understand how near we are to fucking things up. But it's not like a timer on a bomb, and that means that we can still change things around. And this film is a little bit about that, about turning around and changing your ways, even if it's just your attitude towards things."

The real world time is 6:30pm (BST) on May 9, and an email has just informed us that 'Mary Goore' has joined our Zoom call from Stockholm. Those familiar with Ghost's pre-history will be aware that this was Tobias Forge's stage name in both his death metal band Repugnant and his glam metal outfit Crashdiet, and though he chooses today to keep his camera off, the voice on the call is unmistakably that of Ghost's 43-year-old leader. The trailer for Rite Here Rite Now premiered exactly four and a half hours ago, and as far as Tobias can ascertain, it's been "well met" so far the only "concerns" he as noticed to date bein raised by fans worried that the film has not yet been booked into picture houses in their homelands.

"The film is being distributed in many countries, but not all," he explains, "so I understand that there were some voices that felt like we'd overlooked this or that country. It's like when you announce a tour, and immediately get 'Why aren't you coming to… [insert country name]?' That wasn't our decision, I can't tell you why, it's just that some countries didn't want the film, or whatever."

Officially, the first seeds for Rite Here Rite Now were planted in Tobias's mind "over a decade" ago.

"When Ghost got signed to Loma Vista, Tom Whalley [owner and CEO] asked what the story of the band was," he explained in the press release announcing the film. "He felt telling a story was vital in order to get new fans engaged. I said that because we were a new 'baby' band and, more importantly, we were an anonymous baby band, there wasn't really a compelling story to tell. Not yet anyway. But I told him that if he wanted a story, I could come up with one. This film is the fruit of that conversation."

Those who've follwed the band from their earliest days, however, will know that, from the outset, Ghost emerged accompanied by a sense of theatre. Back in 2012, when I spoke to Swedish journalist Richard Lagergren, formerly the guitarist in the band Portrait, and the first 'outsider' to be informed of the existence of Ghost, he used the words "very cinematic, very surreal and very intense" to describe his first encounter with the group. He revealed that he was at his home one Sunday afternoon in October 2010, when he received a phone call telling him that a local band wished to see him. Within an hour, a car pulled up outside his home, and he was blindfolded, driven into the countryside and led into a disused warehouse, where, once his blindfold was removed, he found himself face-to-face with Papa Emeritus and five Nameless Ghouls, and was informed that he had been selected to begin disseminating word of Ghost's Satanic ministry to the world. This was very much not how bands were expected to conduct their business in 2010, and it telegraphed, from day one, Tobias's (still present) desire to keep Ghost out of step with standard, traditional music industry conventions.

[Accompanying photo: Portrait of Papa IV taken in his costume from the start of the show - gold Huntsman jacket, black pirate shirt, black ascot with devil scarf ring, distressed black pants. He is staring at the camera, his arms crossed and his hands at shoulder height, making the sign of the horns. Caption: "What delights are up Tobias's ornate sleeves this time?"]

"From the start, we were cutting against the grain," he reflects. "If you think back to that time, it was the beginning of when the music industry demanded a sort of hyper-frantic online presence from bands, and every band was updating Facebook as soon as they did anything, sending out private messages, like, 'Hey, everyone, don't forget to buy tickets!' I said immediately to my label, 'I don't wanna do that, I fucking hate that shit, and I don't wanna be part of that…and we're a fucking anonymous band.'

"So it was an issue, and we had to steer around a lot of those things, while figuring out, 'How do we communicate with the world what we want to communicate?' We had to figure out ways to sort of cable out a story to the world, a story that we didn't really have at that time, or a story that I didn't want to tell. Because what was that story going to be? My story? No, fuck that. So I said 'I'm gonna come up with a story, and it might unfold in the form of short little online episodes.' And Tom Whalley was like 'OK, I'm intrigued. What do you want to do?'

"So we started doing these episodes about The Ministry, with our little commercial messages attached, and it turned out fun. But obviously it became very complicated: there's a reason why bands just turn on their phones and are like, 'We're coming to Brazil!' It's so much easier. Whereas everything that we've ever done has always been way more complicated. But lots of fun, too. And so, via those web episodes, the story has really taken shape. The idea of making a film has been in my head for years, and I've always been adamant about the web episodes not being too detailed, because you don't want to paint yourself into a corner, so there's been a lot of loose threads. But I figured that I could take these loose threads, tie them together in some sort of comprehensible form, and that could be the film. And that's why we're talking today, finally!"

If you think that today Tobias Forge is going to outline exactly what happens onscreen in Rite Here Rite Now, you really haven't been paying attention to how Ghost operate. For as much as Tobias loves theatre and showmanship, he also treasures and truly values the mystique around his band. And that has its roots in the way he himself discovered his favourite bands as a teenager. For as much as he loved Kiss, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, the Sex Pistols and Venom, the young Tobias Forge was equally immersed in an underground extreme metal community where anonymity was prized above adulation.

"A lot of the bands that I grew up listening to weren't very famous at all," he recalls. "Some of them didn't ever play live, some 'bands' were actually one guy in his bedroom, and you knew very little about anyone. And when these bands did communicate with the world, it was through fanzines, and very adolescent interviews where they gave outrageous, very provocative answers. That helped cement my magnetism towards maintaining mystique, and back in 2010, I definitely thought that there was a way where Ghost could achieve some sort of success whilst 100% maintaining a mystique. And over the years, I've learned that was hard…but then I never thought we'd be as successful as we are.

"The best way to be anonymous in a band is by not forming a band. Don't do it! It's counterintuitive to remain anonymous if you want to be in a big professional band, and it's counterintuitive to sign with a major label who want to break your band. I've always been under the impression that in order to become a representative of the night, you have to be supernatural, but now it's time to let the world in on the story so far, to some extent."

[Accompanying image: Papa IV on stage during Year Zero, microphone in his left hand, his right hand counting two. Caption: "Is Papa IV on borrowed time?"]

With Rite Here Rite Now, Tobias admits that he's in "virgin territory". But here's what we're allowed to know. The film takes place over the course of one evening, with a narrative centered around a gig in Los Angeles, but with flashbacks referencing storylines in the Ghost 'webisodes', which began on YouTube in March 2018. For metal fans, the concept of a feature film blending a live show with a dramatic narrative will likely call to mind Metallica's bold and largely incomprehensible 2013 film Through The Never, a commercial disaster for the band, with James Hetfield subsequently admitting that it "disappeared" and describing the entire experience as "bittersweet". Tobias insists that, actually, there are no overlaps in what he set out to do with Ghost's film - "that film was never a guiding light" are his exact words - and he cites two alternate films as much more instructive in terms of his ambitions.

"As we were pitching the film, the two films that I mentioned a lot in orer for people to try to comprehend artistically what I'm trying to do were [The Rolling Stones' 1983 concert film] Let's Spend The Night Together mixed with [The Sex Pistols' 1980 'mockumentary'] The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle. There is a sense of an origin story, but it's very much a story that takes place during an evening. So you sort of step right into what is happening right there and right then, and maybe the main character's inability, or unwillingness, to be there.

"One issue, or one challenge, that we faced was making a film that was comprehensible to anyone who had no clue about what Ghost is," he continues. "We have a very, very passionate fanbase, who, to a large degree at least, are very aware of everything that goes on with Ghost. The easy part, conceptually, was to make a film that would please them, because they know the story already, they know the context that we are now extending with this film, because it's basically picking up where the last episodes ended. But we wanted it to be that someone who doesn't know shit about the story gets brought up to speed pretty quickly. But this is where my ability to be objective ends, because I'm wondering, 'Do people understand what I'm saying here? Do people get that?'

"Obviously, as with everyone else, I'm a Star Wars fan, and that worked pretty well in the sense where you just crash land right into the story. That works where the message of the film is quite simple, and I think that the message that we're trying to convey with this film is to be right here right now, and not anywhere else. That's what I'm hoping everyone will understand."

[Accompanying photo: Papa and the ghouls backstage before the show. Caption: "What role will the Ghouls play in Rite Here Rite Now?"]

This sounds quite straightforward on paper. But, as Tobias was to quickly learn, the film business is not straightforward, not when films cost 'x million' dollars to make, and someone has to stump up those 'x million' dollars to get it from scripts and storyboards to the screen. Making a film, Tobias says with a very audible sigh, is so much more complicated than making a record, not least because the trust that an artist accumulates working in the music business doesn't necessarily translate to being trusted with a multi-million dollar film budget.

"The film had to go through discussions with finance people who were as curious about the content as you are," he says, diplomatically. "And let's just say that I sometimes struggled to convey what we were just talking about, and not everyone understood it. I'd be saying, 'Look, this is not really, you know, just us live from the Forum.' And they were like, 'Well, could you scrap the live show and just do a film about something else?' And I'd say, 'Well, that kinda defeats the purpose of what I'm trying to sell to you.' So that was a little bit weird."

The end result of such conversations was that no financial backer came onboard for the film, and Ghost and their management ended up funding the whole process - which, he says, ultimately simplified things. But the uncertainty meant that acclaimed Swedish filmmaker Jonas Akerlund - famously once a member of Bathory, and a creative visionary who's made music videos for the likes of Madonna, The Prodigy, U2 and more, as well as directing films such as Lords of Chaos and Spun - decided to step away from potentially directing the film to instead take on a co-producer role, and to advise Tobias as a friend.

In his place, as director, came American filmmaker Alex Ross Perry. He first saw Ghost opening up for Iron Maiden in New York in July 2017, at the conclusion of Maiden's North American tour for The Book of Souls, and subsequently directed the band's own 'mockumentary' Metal Myths, as well as the fabulously provocative promo video for the band's cover of Genesis's 1992 single, Jesus He Knows Me.

"He was obviously the right choice," says Tobias, "and a no-brainer to come aboard, because not only is he a very, very nice guy, but he also totally understands the band.

"Jonas was very involved with all the legwork beforehand, but when he stepped down as the director, and became a producer, it actually made things a little bit easier, because he became less stressed about it; all of a sudden he became calm, and just became my friend instead, pushing everything along. At no point did I feel like I'd bitten off more than I could chew, but the whole thing was definitely a huge learning experience.

"A lot of film studios sometimes struggle to comprehend something that isn't mainstream," he adds. "Like, it's not uncommon that you might want to make a film about, say, a historical event, and they would be, like, 'Hmmm, it's really depressing that the boat sinks in the end. Can it not do that?' And you're like, 'Well, no, the story is about these two lovers that meet on the sinking boat, and yeah, he dies in the end.' 'But that's so depressing! Can we make a different ending?' 'Er, No.' 'Well, we don't want to pay for that.' That's the sort of shit you're up against."

For Tobias, Rite Here Rite Now is clearly the biggest project that he's ever taken on, but Ghost fans shouldn't worry that they're about to lose their hero to Hollywood. At one point today, he mentions his work on the next Ghost album, specifically saying that he's "synchronising" his work on the film with the new record, so we may get an announcement on that sooner rather than later.

There remains one last matter to discuss. In each chapter of Ghost's journey to date, there has been death and renewal, with a new Papa coming along at the end of each cycle to replace the outgoing bandleader. And yet Papa IV was not killed off in Los Angeles. So, Tobias, is he going to transition into the next cycle?

A drawn out "Errrrrrrr…" comes through the speakers before an answer arrives.

"He will be with us, yeah. For a lifetime, if you will. As everyone is."

Okaaaaaay. But will Papa V also be appearing soon?

"I hope so."

At this point, the band's PR steps in to advise that we have one last question. So we ask if Rite Here Rite Now is close to the vision Tobias had in his head when he first embarked upon this ambitious undertaking.

"It's never, you know, 100%," he answers, "but pretty damn close. A lot of things that I think scared people in meetings a year ago, are things that I know that we pulled off. As an artist, people want you to dream big, but I always try to come up with things that are actually doable.

"Everything with Ghost is difficult and expensive, but the records are getting closer to what I imagine, and this film turned out pretty close to what I envisioned. And when I see the film, even I look at the show and go, 'That's pretty entertaining, that's pretty cool.' This is a film that you have not seen before. And you can all tell me what you thought when you see me next, OK?"

SIDEBAR ARTICLE 1: "I'M IN AWE OF TOBIAS!" Rite Here Rite Now director Alex Ross Perry explains how he helped Ghost's mastermind realise his vision.

[Accompanying photo: Another portrait of Papa IV in the gold jacket. His left hand is on his hip, his right gestures across his body, as though he is pointing to the sidebar. Caption: "Tobias has one helluva vision. Getting execs to understand it ain't easy!"]

[Inset photo: Alex Ross Perry looking off-camera to the right, as though he is staring at the photo of Papa next to him.]

Pennsylvania-born filmmaker Alex Ross Perry has a CV that includes helming music videos for the likes of Kim Gordon, Pavement, Sleigh Bells and Bully; writing, producing and directing acclaimed grunge/punk movie Her Smell; and creating Ghost's brilliant 2022 mockumentary, Metal Myths. However, he explains, working with Tobias Forge on Rite Here Rite Now was an experience like no other.

How did you and Tobias first come into one another's orbit? "I first saw Ghost opening up for Iron Maiden in New York, at the Barclays Center, seven years ago, and then I went on YouTube and had a lot of fun diving into their music videos. I'd done work for [Ghost's US record label] Loma Vista, and so I said to them, 'Nothing I've done is in the world of this band, but I'm a big fan, so if you ever need anything in the world of Ghost, my hand is raised.' And a couple of months later, I was asked if I wanted to create an official/unofficial Ghost mockumentary, streamlining the narrative woven into the band's story, and that became Metal Myths, which launched on April Fool's Day 2022."

How was that received? "I know that Tobias really liked what we did with that, and thought it was an amazing testament to his work and creativity. So then I was asked to curate an event at the Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles to celebrate Ghost's Grammy nomination [for Best Metal Performance, for Call Me Little Sunshine], and we had some fun working on the Mary On The Cross [sic] 1969 era. While I was out in LA, we did the Jesus He Knows Me music video too, and I was told, 'We're doing a movie,' so I said 'Well, if you need any help, I'm here.'"

What did you make of Tobias when you first spoke to him? "I was, and am, a huge admirer of everything that he's built, so I was in awe of his creativity and the scope of his vision, and I remain so having now collaborated with him on this movie. He's one of the greats, in terms of the vision he has. He's a nerd, a repository for information and references to music history and film history, and that is incredibly rare. His vision has taken him so far in 10 years, and in 10 years' time it'll have taken him even further. My favorite band is Kiss, and Tobias might say the same, but they stumbled when they tried to branch out with [1978 TV film] Kiss Meets The Phantom Of The Park, whereas Tobias built a visual narrative into the Ghost solar system from the beginning. Working with him was constantly inspiring."

What was the most challenging part of the whole process for you? "It was just logistically very complex. It was challenging being at the Forum, shooting scenes that we were going to connect with scenes that we would be filming five months later."

How much creative input did you get to have, and how much were you able to bring your own vision to what was already mapped out? "I consider it a real collaboration between the two of us. His vision for the storytelling is crystal clear, but even though the A to Z is mapped out, there's so much room to discuss what happens from B to Y. You could just talk all night about that, and we did many times, like, 'Does this happen?' 'Is this joke funny?' 'Should this scene have no dialogue?' I took ideas that were not possible and turned them into ideas that are possible. We sat on his tourbus one month before the Forum and just talked until 4 or 5am about every story beat, every scene, every moment between the characters. It was such an amazing experience from start to finish."

SIDEBAR ARTICLE 2: "I'D SIT WATCHING FILMS ALL NIGHT, THEN HAVE A HORRENDOUS NEXT DAY IN SCHOOL!" Five flicks that fired the imagination of teenage cinephile Tobias Forge

[Accompanying photo: A third portrait of Papa IV in the gold jacket, staring directly into the camera and throwing the horns with both hands. Caption: "What the Devil will Tobias do next?"]

By his own admission, Tobias Forge is a film nerd, who watched "everything, all the time."

"I've always been very interested in cinema," he says. "As a kid, I'd watch everything that my older brother and his friends were watching, and as soon as I was old enough, I had a TV and VCR in my bedroom. I spent so much time in front of the TV playing guitar and watching films - French drama, comedy, horror, action, all kinds of films. I'd sit watching films all night, then have a horrendous next day in school! Anyone who has a record collection and video collection similar to mine will recognize lots of little references in our film."

Here are five films that regularly got slotted into the video cassette recorder in Tobias's teenage bedroom.

THE FUNHOUSE (Tobe Hooper, 1981) Tacky, violent and unpleasantly scary slasher flick set in a traveling carnival, directed by Tobe Hooper, who had produced, co-written and directed 1974's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. A commercial failure, but one with cult appeal for fans of 80s 'video nasties'.

SCARFACE (Brian De Palma, 1983) Endlessly quotable and unrelentingly violent crime drama depicting the rise and fall of drug lord Tony Montana, played by Al Pacino. One of the most iconic gangster films ever made, referenced on countless gangsta rap records. All together now: "Say hello to my little friend!"

C.H.U.D. (Douglas Cheek, 1984) Schlocky sci-fi horror about murderous humanoids roaming the sewers of New York City. Ghost pal Dave Grohl was also a fan of the movie. His teenage band, Mission Impossible, recorded a song called C.H.U.D. with a chorus that ran: 'Chaotic Hardcore Underage Delinquents! Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers!'

BETTY BLUE (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1986) Impossibly intense French 'erotic psychological drama' featuring lots of philosophical musing, lots of steamy sex, and an inevitable slide into madness. A cult classic, which shifted tens of thousands of film posters to art and film studies students worldwide, it made 21-year-old Beatrice Dalle an international sex symbol.

LES AMANTS DU PONT-NEUF (Leos Carax, 1991) Another intense, wordy French drama about a doomed, obsessive love affair, staring a young Juliette Binoche as homeless artist Michele besotted with alcohol-and-pills-addicted wannabe circus performer Alex (Denis Lavant). The film went insanely over-budget and took forever to shoot; by the end, real-life lovers Binoche and Carax had split.

Copped the Ghost Metal Hammer so thought I’d share the contents for anyone who may not be able to buy it for themselves (the article and Tobias interview is Rite Here Rite Now spoiler free!)