GHOST's GRAMMY-Winning Song 'Cirice' Was Originally Meant To Be 'More Proggy'

A Nameless Ghoul from the Swedish occult rock band GHOST stopped by the GRAMMY Pro tent backstage at this year’s Lollapalooza in Chicago, Illinois in early August to talk about the group’s wide-ranging influences, their sensitive side, and the process of writing and recording their Grammy-winning song “Cirice”, form the band’s third album, “Meliora”.

Speaking about “Cirice”, the Nameless Ghoul said: “In the early demoing stages of that song, it was meant as more of a proggy song, I suppose, that didn’t necessarily… It wasn’t necessarily a song that was supposed to have a big chorus or necessarily… Because we wanted the record to hit peaks, in a way, but we wanted there to be, sort of, transportation themes, if you want to, between, where the song, which originally was called ‘Devil Church/Cirice’, was supposed to be a longer piece. Then, by accident, the chorus for the song was written, which made it all of a sudden into this quite explosive song that had a two-minute intro. If you have a big, explosive song, don’t fucking have a two-minute intro. So we cut off the intro and made it just a one-minute intro and said, ‘At least we did what we could with it.’ Then all of a sudden it became the first single of the record and we had to cut it down even further in order to make it fit into the format. But that’s part of the writing as well, at least where I’m coming from. You put a lot of ideas on the table, and what you feel one minute being something could turn into something else once you combine that and that, and you take away that. You have to kill your darlings a lot if you’re somewhat of a… It’s gonna be very hard to write songs if you’re not willing to change a little, or be dynamic in your thinking.”

“Cirice” recently reached the Top 10 at rock radio, the first song from the band to get significant airplay in the U.S.

GHOST‘s upcoming EP, which consists primarily of covers, was helmed by English producer Tom Dalgety, who has previously worked with ROYAL BLOOD and KILLING JOKE, among others.

During an interview with myROCK, one of the Nameless Ghouls said the upcoming GHOST EP “will sort of connect with ‘Meliora’, so it’s not [going to feature] a new Papa [Editor’s note: In a parody of the Catholic Church’s tradition of papal succession, GHOST singer Papa Emeritus is purportedly replaced by a new Papa for each GHOST album.], it’s not a new album; it’s gonna be like an extension of ‘Meliora’. That is gonna prolong the tour. So we’re gonna do an American tour in the fall, and then we’re gonna come back to Europe in the beginning of next year and do a bigger, sort of final ‘Meliora’ show. And in between now and then, we will work on the new album, and after the European tour in the beginning of [2017], we’re gonna go into the studio and record a new album.”