This is a song I’ve been wanting to share for weeks now. I’ve hesitated though, because unlike everything else I’ve posted, where if you like what you hear, you feel free to start listening to the band/singer’s catalogue with abandon, Ghost comes with a bit of a warning: if you’re easily offended, you may not want to listen to their original work, even though the music is fantastic.
What type of offended? Well, you know those bands that sing nothing but Christian contemporary music and it’s all devoted to God and Jesus and the worship and praise? Well, throw in some metal, and replace God and Jesus with the Devil, and you’ve got Ghost.
No, I’m not kidding.
I’ve seen them perform in concert twice now. The second concert was fantastic, and it didn’t hurt that I was more familiar with their material than I was the first time. But what made it so great was the pure spectacle and show: there’s so much charisma during the performance, especially that of the lead singer, that I alternate between thinking what that they REALLY believe what they’re singing about versus it’s just a gimmick that they’re REALLY dedicated to. Then again, they’re from Sweden, so it may very well be the former.
Toward the end of that second concert, after all of their original work, so much of which has fantastic melodies and haunting chords, they performed a cover by Roky Erickson: “If You Have Ghosts.” And it was gorgeous.
You don’t have to worry about your soul if you listen to this cover: this cover absolutely has nothing to do with the band’s beliefs and everything to do, I suspect, with the delightful use of being able to sing their own band’s name in a rather ironic way. And if you like what you hear, and you’re not easily offended and appreciate great music despite the lyrics, try giving “Cirice” a try, and if you really feel like having a laugh and want to hear a song deliberately styled as a contemporary Christian ballad, try listening to “He Is.”
But for now, if you just want to hear what the band sounds like, and if you want to hear an amazing cover song, listen to “If You Have Ghosts” and tell me what you think.
Like it? Love it? Hate it? Sound off below!
Reminder: Music Monday is about the music, not the videos. Videos are just the medium I’m using to share the music, and some videos aren’t actually videos at all. Enjoy the songs, but if YouTube forces you to watch some sort of advertisement before you can get to the music, please be patient.
Aubrey’s been reading and writing since she was about two and a half, and has been a storyteller for as long as she can remember. Early on, she discovered a love of romance, reading her first Harlequin somewhere around age twelve (it featured an F1 race car driver, as this was long before NASCAR was cool). She wrote her first romance novel in high school. It was admittedly not very good, but she wrote another, and another. She thinks those first few might still be on a floppy disk somewhere in a storage bin.
Greetings, and welcome to week three of shameless self-promotion! Our third week at Speculative Chic was SUPER BUSY, with three days in a row with two posts instead of one. Why all the craziness? Well, we wanted to get our Hugo Reading project wrapped up before the rockets were handed out on Saturday night (and to that affect, CONGRATS to N.K. Jemisin for her Best Novel win!), and I have to say, it’s been a joy to see all these different bloggers reviewing in one place! But we did MORE than just book reviews, so let’s break it down:
Thursday had Nu reminiscing about the 
Welcome to third and final installment of Calico In Conversation with Matthew S. Rotundo. If you missed Parts One and Two, click below to catch up:
Calico Writes 