**UPDATE**: Nergal has now removed the photo in question from his Instagram account.
The original article follows below.
BEHEMOTH's Adam "Nergal" Darski recently posted a photo on Instagram of him hanging out backstage at the FortaRock festival in The Netherlands with Swedish musician Tobias Forge — believed to be none other than Papa Emeritus II, the frontman of Swedish occult rockers GHOST, who go to great lengths to keep the identities of their bandmembers a secret. The photo was accompanied by the caption "If you have ghosts... U have everything;)", a line from the ROKY ERICKSON song "If You Have Ghosts", which was covered by GHOST on their EP "If You Have Ghost", released in November 2013.
BEHEMOTH and GHOST shared the stage at FortaRock, which took place on May 31 in Nijmegen.
Besides singing for MAGNA CARTA CARTEL, an experimental rock outfirt, Forge has also spent time in hard rock and metal acts REPUGNANT and SUBVISION.
In an early 2012 interview with Full Metal Jackie's nationally syndicated radio show, one of the "Nameless Ghouls" from GHOST was asked whether he can foresee a day when the members of GHOST won't be anonymous anymore. He said, "I think there is a difference between being anonymous and unmasked. Where SLIPKNOT actually wear masks still, while KISS during their unmasked days didn't. Obviously, it's a thing of the times.
"What we're trying to do, it's very hard to maintain. If the actual goal was to not be known, we try to maintain that, but in the long run, we can't really expect that to be something everlasting. Most of our fans are actually quite keen on not knowing, which works to our favor, but I think there is a difference between people knowing who is behind the mask or being unmasked.
"We can't really see ourselves going up on stage and afterwards just dropping the masks saying, 'Oh, it's me, it's me, actually. Can you see?' No, no, no… We don't want that. We don't want to spoil it. That's the whole reason why we are anonymous and we try not to show ourselves. We try to eliminate, not the human aspects, but the humane aspects, if you want. We want to put Papa Emeritus in the limelight. He's supposed to be the living character, even though rigor mortis has basically set in in his poor old body. But that's the face of the band. He's the person, everybody else are just puppets."
In a separate 2012 intervie with ThePhoenix.com, one of the "Nameless Ghouls" from GHOST said: "The initial thought of doing this anonymously was because we didn't wanna sort of have any personality and we didn't want to have faces interfere with the reaction and the overall mindframe that we wanted for the crowd to be in, and ourselves to be in, in a GHOST context. Whereas I really don't think that any of us could have understood that the anonymous thing would be such a turn-off. So when we actually really go at length to be anonymous just to focus on the music, now there are a lot of people focusing on the fact that we're anonymous, and it sucks. On the other hand, I think that being a band with the ambition of taking what you're doing to someplace else and levitate, I think that now with a bit of hindsight we see that what goes around when you're in a band that's sort of semi-successful, I think that being anonymous really helps you focus on what really matters. Putting on a good show, etc.
"There are a lot of bands out there, especially young bands, they seem to forget about why they're actually at the place they're at. Because there are so many other things that you can dive into when you're a band on the road, doing festivals, etc, there are a lot of other things that can occupy your time.
"It can be hard to be in a band when nobody recognizes you. But it has its benefits, especially when you're on tour with other bands and you see how they're approached by other people, what's expected of them. Whenever there's a crowd outside a venue, waiting for the bands to hang out, we pass as roadies."
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Seminal Swedish metallers AT THE GATES have entered Studio Fredman in Gothenburg to begin recording their much-anticipated comeback studio album, "At War With Reality", for a tentative October/November release via Century Media. The CD will be mixed at Fascination Street Studios in Örebro, Sweden with Jens Bogren (OPETH, KATATONIA, SOILWORK, PARADISE LOST, KREATOR).
A one-and-a-half-minute video clip of the drum recordings for "At War With Reality" can be seen below.
In a recent interview with Noisey, AT THE GATES singer Tomas Lindberg said about the songwriting process for "At War With Reality": "With this album, there was really two ways we could go into it. We could be really calculating and go, 'Oh shit, this is really important. People are gonna really expect a lot. This is the most important album we've done.' We could go into that way and overthink everything, and we're still very meticulous about all the details, of course, but the other way would be just to go wherever the thing takes us. It sounds very cosmic or philosophical, but the music is out there. You just need the fucking medium to get it out to the people."
He added: "We really just fed off each other during the whole process. I mean, this album has been in all our heads the whole time since we first started working on it. There was always an idea the whole time. A small part, and then we'd say, 'Oh yeah, that's the whole song. Let's do that!' We're all in the process, and we're all focused, so when I'd get an idea, it might be too crazy, but these two guys [bassist Jonas Björler and guitarist Anders Björler] can put in the right place."
Lindberg told Decibel magazine about what happened to change the bandmembers' minds about making a new CD in the six years since the AT THE GATES reunion was first announced: "I think a lot happened, mentally, when we decided to continue touring. When we started to do the global thing in 2011. That whole idea of being an active band, touring and hanging out, just grew on us, I guess.
"To be able to be in a band that has no internal problems whatsoever, to be able to tour around the world together with some of your best friends, it's just incredible, mind-blowing even. Then the idea just grew on us.
"I play in a band that involves some of my favorite musicians and songwriters and we are all still very hungry, creatively. I think that you can hear that in all our other projects, they are very alive and pushing boundaries still — from Anders' [Björler, guitar] solo album, to AGRIMONIA, to the new reinvigorated THE HAUNTED lineup, to DISFEAR and LOCK UP, to PARADISE LOST and VALLENFYRE. We feel that we have great and relevant new music in us. And we know how important this next album will be.
"When Anders came around saying that he had been jamming some new ideas around, it was not hard to make the decision to go 'all in,' so to say.
"I know it's kind of a gamble or what you want to call it. But this is a very creative album that we are writing right now, it's not a comfortable 'Slaughter Of The Soul Pt. 2' or anything like that, it's an album that I feel is pushing our own boundaries, and challenges our collective creative intellect. And that is the main reason for us to do this, it's for our own sake.
"We could easily go out and continue touring the old stuff successfully for quite a while, I think, but this is us putting ourselves on the line here, and we do that solely because we feel that we need to do this, this material is too strong to say no to."
Lindberg also spoke about not wanting to live up to people's expectations of making another album in the vein of "Slaughter Of The Soul".
"We have gone beyond the idea of making 'Slaughter Of The Soul Pt. 2', which was actually never the idea to start with," he explained. "This is an album that is so full on conceptually and creatively, so involved and ambitious that I am almost compelled to call it pretentious. And that brings me back to the feeling that was with us when we were creating 'With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness'. I'm not saying that this album sounds like that album, but it has that burning urge, the sense of importance that album is trying to portray.
"As I have always stated, we are an honest band, a band that is very focused on being true to ourselves and never follow any trends or try to portray a given perception of what people want us to be.
"What we decided on was really to let the music take us where it had to go, to go 'all in,' so to say.
"To answer your question, the record will be filled with a lot of the SLAYER worship and riffage that is 'Slaughter Of The Soul', but people will also recognize the more dark, melodic side that was 'With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness', and maybe some of the more pretentious arrangements that was part of our early career."
TESTAMENT's original bassist, Greg Christian, who was most recently forced out of the band earlier this year, has posted the following message on his Facebook page:
"I had an idea LMAO — a weekly 'column' here. I was prompted to do this by seeing vague, partial at best, and usually pretty incoherent responses — in TESTAMENT interviews — in regards to my departure. And never once an actual, factual statement. Because it's pretty cut and dry. I got sick of not getting paid, and they got sick of me getting hostile about it. Not sure they even realized they pushed me into a position of being bitter and resentful, then blamed me for not being happy. But whatever… All I'm doing here is simple — since they obviously lack the ability to speak to the press in the same manner I was spoken to regularly, I'll do it for them. And I'll try to keep it clean, maybe a little tongue in cheek about the ridiculousness, and not bitter and nasty. [I will] do my best.
"The point is just — be how you're going to be, be who or what you're going to be, but stand up and be it. Don't be one way to me, then stutter and backpedal about it to others, especially if it's because you know how not right the truth really looks.
"So I'll throw a little something out there once a week, mostly to entertain myself, since I can't afford a movie LMAO (shoulda paid me lol).
"Anyway... here goes volume 1.
"Two things I heard the last time I spoke to Chuck [Billy, TESTAMENT singer] in January and no comment from me here — just two excerpts from our conversation. FYI, my response to both was 'Ya. Okay.'
1. I was never part of anything
2. We all made the same on the road
"?!?!?! ?!?!?! ?!?!?!
"Tune in next week to hear the casual comment (and surrounding circumstances) that became the straw that broke the camel's back."
In a recent interview with Germany's Rock Hard magazine, TESTAMENT guitarist Eric Peterson stated about Christian's latest departure: "Well, you know, I'll just say this… Greg, basically, I think, was basically struggling in his mind with what he was doing. And he just seemed very unhappy on tour, and he has a lot of different reasons; he can only describe that. But he just seemed very unhappy, and we just let him go. Like, 'OK, you're unhappy. Then go.' 'Cause it was a lot of tours where he was unhappy. That's all I can really say about that. Steve DiGiorgio came onboard for the Soundwave tour we did in Australia. Steve DiGiorgio is great. We hadn't played with him for awhile, but it's awesome."
Speaking to 100PercentRock.com, TESTAMENT singer Chuck Billy stated about Christian's split with the group: "Well, I think Greg, he informed us that he wasn't going to be participating on the new record release and that was his last tour with us. We knew we had Australia coming up, so, of course, Steve DiGiorgio was probably one of the first ones to come to mind. He did 'The Gathering' record with us and we enjoyed that whole cycle of touring, so he was definitely, probably, our first choice. We didn't want to go through auditions and do all that. We just knew that he was here, and he could do it, and it was killer."
Asked if there was a particular reason that Greg just had enough of it, Billy replied: "Well, I think that the last tour he just wasn't getting along, and he just decided that that was going to be the last tour with us, so we just kind of said, 'Well, okay. I guess we'll have to maybe look for what's coming up in the future.' You know — there's nothing we can do."
Christian was forced to leave the band's North American tour with LAMB OF GOD and KILLSWITCH ENGAGE in November 2013 for "personal reasons." Filling in for him was EXODUS bassist Jack Gibson.
British heavy metal legends JUDAS PRIEST will embark on a U.S. in the fall. Support on the trek will come from Los Angeles glam-metal jokesters STEEL PANTHER.
The dates are as follows:
Oct. 01 - Rochester, NY - Main Street Armory
Oct. 03 - Hammond, IN - The Venue at Horseshoe Casino
Oct. 04 - Louisville, KY - Louder Than Life Fest at Champions
Oct. 09 - Brooklyn, NY - Barclays
Oct. 10 - Atlantic City, NJ - Harrah's
Oct. 11 - Mashantucket, CT - MGM Grand Theater at Foxwood's
Oct. 14 - Lowell, MA - Tsongas Center at UMass
Oct. 15 - Allentown, PA - PPL Center
Oct. 17 - East Rutherford, NJ - Izod Center
Oct. 19 - Detroit, MI - Fox Theatre
Oct. 24 - Baltimore, MD - Pier Six Pavilion
Oct. 28 - Duluth, GA - The Arena at Gwinnett Center
Oct. 30 - Hollywood, FL - Hard Rock Live Arena
Nov. 06 - Allen, TX - Allen Event Center
Nov. 07 - Austin, TX - FunFunFun Fest
Nov. 10 - Los Angeles, CA - Club Nokia
Nov. 12 - Phoenix, AZ - Jobing Arena
Nov. 13 - Highland, CA - San Manuel Casino
Nov. 14 - Las Vegas, NV - The Pearl
Nov. 16 - San Jose, CA - City National Civic
Nov. 18 - Salt Lake City, UT - Maverik Center
News about a special fan presale for tickets, merchandise bundles and more will be announced soon.
In a recent interview with Full Metal Jackie, JUDAS PRIEST singer Rob Halford was asked what changed the band's minds about playing live more than three years after they announced their "farewell" tour. "It's gotta be the fans," he said. "We went out there, in all genuine honesty, saying that this was a farewell tour, but if we could have picked a better word than 'farewell,' I wish we could have found one. That should have been my job, being the lyricist. But I suppose 'farewell' isn't really goodbye, it's like, 'See you next time.'
"What we were trying to explain as we moved along was, we will be going out again, but it won't be these two-year treks around the world that naturally become a little bit more challenging when you get to a certain stage in your life. And we never want to compromise ourselves. We wanna be able to go out onstage, wherever it might be on the planet, and give you everything we've got. So if there's a way of, kind of, readjusting the touring scheduling where we can still do that, and go in the ring and give you everything, then that's what we intend to do. And we've just been discussing, while we've been together in New York, the first time we've been together as a band in three years, ironically enough. 'Cause we saw each other in and out of the studio, but we were never all there at the same time. So, for the first time we were together recently, and we discussed about the touring side of it. And we've actually started to put down setlist ideas. So it looks like we'll be going out in the fall, in America. So you'll be getting us towards that time of the year. And we'll be kicking the tires, as they say, and getting the engine revved up and ready to go out and play live to our fans again."
JUDAS PRIEST's new studio album, "Redeemer Of Souls", will be released in North America on July 8 (pushed up a week from the originally announced July 15) via Epic Records. The CD's title track was made available for purchase via iTunes and other digital service providers on April 29.
Speaking to the "Trunk Nation" show, which airs on SiriusXM's Hair Nation, JUDAS PRIEST singer Rob Halford stated about "Redeemer Of Souls": "When we finished [the] 'Epitaph' [tour], we just got so buzzed from the fans and the reaction wherever we went. Just to put the 'Epitaph' tour together, which was we tried to put a song from every record into the show, and we were living in the life of JUDAS PRIEST, all those decades, in one show, night after night on the world trek, and I think that really did something to us eternally; as musicians, it should do when you tour. So we realized that this next record really had to be really strong, full of energy, because it's relentless, the tracks are relentless. The energy that you feel off 'Redeemer Of Souls' is replicated in that direction time and time and time again."
