Ghost’s Tobias Forge reveals the influence of punk on him: “I sing a lot like a lot of the punk bands that I like”

Tobias Forge, frontman of Swedish rock band Ghost, reveals in a recent interview that he draws a lot of his influences from punk music. In the radio station 95.5 KLOS’s “New & Approved” programme, Forge opens up a little about his relationship with punk music:

“If you get the best of punk rock 1977 to 1980, a lot of those ‘hits’ are the sort of music that I grew up listening to with my brother. He was also a very, very big fan of most things. He would also rave about how cool The Damned were at the time, and then he would put on the Eurhythmics and then he would put on a Rainbow record. And that definitely rubbed off on me. I guess everything is sort of within the rock genre — just rock and pop”, he says and continues:

“One band that actually I like a lot that I don’t think people mention a lot but that also was a big influence on me and I feel close to in terms of wittiness as well as the sort of melodic language and humor was The Dickies. ‘Dawn Of The Dickies’ is one fucking bomb of a record; that’s so good. In my old band, we used to play ‘Infidel Zombie’, a cover of that. I don’t think people notice, but ‘Dawn Of The Dickies’, you can hear a lot of Ghost in there — or the other way around; you can a lot of Dickies in Ghost. But people don’t notice it for some reason. But the melodic language…”

Forge goes on to say that he also hears a lot of Bad Religion in his own music. He says that a lot of his own vocal style comes from the band’s output.

“I think that a lot of the punk elements of my writing and my background might not be in super focus when I speak about music because it’s not that apparent. But I think a lot of the humoristic element of writing — if that makes sense — comes from the punkish attitude. And also my way of singing that is, obviously, debated if it’s metal or not. No — it’s punk. I sing like a lot of punk bands. I sing a lot like a lot of the punk bands that I like.”

A while ago, Forge opened up a bit about the concept of the upcoming Ghost album, which he had come up with years ago.