**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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One of the Nameless Ghouls from Swedish occult rockers GHOST was interviewed on the November 15-17 edition of Full Metal Jackie's nationally syndicated radio show.
To see a full list of stations carrying the program and when it airs, go to FullMetalJackieRadio.com.
Full Metal Jackie: GHOST has a new covers EP [out] called "If You Have Ghosts". It was recorded and produced by Dave Grohl [FOO FIGHTERS, NIRVANA]. Who initiated working together — GHOST or Dave himself?
Nameless Ghoul: I think it was… we bumped into him when we were doing festivals, and we just started talking about… I don't remember exactly what it was now, but we just got into the idea and the setup of possibly working together at some point, and this was late summer, last summer, and FOO FIGHTERS were just about to go on a little bit of a break and he just happened to have some time over. So, it was very quickly, sort of, decided that, well, we should do something very, very soon and very quick just in order to make it happen. Because if you do something and place it too far ahead, it might collide with something else. So, it was just a very, very playful project, very, yeah, very fun and inspiring.
Full Metal Jackie: A pretty interesting choice of artists to cover on this covers EP: ABBA, DEPECHE MODE, ARMY OF LOVERS... What about a song sparks your interests?
Nameless Ghoul: First and foremost, obviously, it has to be a good song. The criteria is, basically, there has to be something in the song that is an ingredient that you can change, you can alter it, you have to hear it like in an alternative version of the song. And secondly, lyrically, it needs to be sort of fitting with [GHOST frontman] Papa, 'cause obviously there are a whole, big selection of songs that you just want to find obscure songs, but it has to sort of fit into the concept in some way. Considering how extremely huge ABBA is, you know, "I'm a Marionette" is probably one of the songs that most people don't even know, so, it is always funnier to bring out a song that is not completely synonymous with the artist. As well as I think, you know, "Waiting For The Night" is not probably the most known DEPECHE MODE song.
Full Metal Jackie: Who else is on your wish list of people you'd like to collaborate with? What puts someone on the GHOST radar that you would want to work together with?
Nameless Ghoul: That's a good question. I mean, there's always, like, from an aesthetic point of view, there's so many cool, different sort of collaborations that you can partake in — either like a writing thing or purely an artist lending its talents to whatever you want to do, or it's a producer, or a mixer, or… there are so many things. There are so many people that are very, very skilled at what they do. But one thing that we've learned is that, you know, sometimes certain producers, certain people work very, very well together with certain bands, and vice versa. Whereas bringing someone on that is a name is not always a guarantee for success. So even though, from a personal standpoint, you have a lot of people that you would like to explore working with, I'm not entirely sure there are so many that we believe could do miracles with us, because it's a special, you know… As much as we try to find cool and funny songs to cover that will fit with Papa, it's the same thing if we want to bring someone onto our concept, and do like a feature thing. Which is definitely not out of the question, it really needs to be someone that fits in one way or another. Yeah, of course, we have ideas, but they are probably more… We try not to make them very predictable — you know, having some big lead singer from an old heavy metal band. That would not be very fun. I don't know. We'll see in the future. We have some ideas and we'll see if it works out.
