Not sure if this thread belongs here or in the metal section but it's kind a companion thread to my Roky Erickson one.

I don't know Ghost well and just started checking them out and while I like them, their sound is very clearly derivative of so many other 70s bands in particular, especially Roky Erickson and the Aliens who I believe they got their name from with the song "If You Have Ghosts", but in your opinions, what bands do you think most clearly influenced them or do they sound like aside from Roky Erikson, Black Sabbath and Mercyful Fate/King Diamond?

I can't place my finger on exactly who else they sound like, other than that I simply know that they are a retro-take-off band (could we even say "rip off"?) of a whole lot of different bands, most of them from the 70s.

Particularly on the song "Square Hammer" I am trying to figure out where else I have heard that riff?

Where do you guys really think they got their sound from and do you guys think they are really as great as many other people seem to think they are?

Check out Blue Oyster Cult's first three albums, particularly Tyranny and Mutation.

Yeah I'll do that.

I actually like B.O.C. but have never listened really carefully to those albums.

I'm thinking Urijah Heap may also have influenced them, along with probably quite a few other 70s rock bands.

Hmm, well I just skimmed through most of the songs on that album but didn't hear much that sounded like the Ghost tracks I've been listening to, in particular Square Hammer.

What B.O.C. song sounds like Square Hammer?

Because something about that song sounds very familiar like other bands have made similar sounding songs before, especially with riffs that sound like that one main catchy riff off that track.

I have just listened to Square Hammer. My first impression is that it reminded me of some rock bands of the 90s. I don't know which one.

I have been saying there is a lot of ABBA in Ghost, done in a rock/semi-metal kind of way, since I heard the debut album. Then just a couple of months ago I heard an interview with the original Ghost guitarist Martin Persner and he described just that. That they wanted the songs to sound like a rock version of ABBA.

My first thoughts on hearing Ghost were, "These guys were influenced by Blue Oyster Cult." Maybe that wasn't their deliberate intention, heck they might not have even ever actually LISTENED to B.O.C- but the music does remind me of B.O.C quite a bit.

Source:

http://musikproducent.se/podd/2017/046- ... pha-ghost/

In Swedish though...

Isn't ABBA disco?

I don't know that I've ever actually listened to them before though I assume I've heard them.

I guess I'll have to listen to some of their stuff to see.

There's no way in hell that they aren't huge KISS and Alice Cooper fans. I hear that influence a lot on their second album in particular.

Tobias Forge has confirmed that Voivod's "Angel Rat" album was a huge influence on him and is a big part of the Ghost sound.

He also mentions Death SS, but has been adamant that he hates their music and was only inspired by their image. Never understood why he even brings them up if he doesn't even like them, but whatever

Yes, they were a pop/disco band. But it is quite clear that there is a strong influence there on how Ghost choose to write music. Doesn't make Ghost of course but that very strong pop nerve fund in Ghost can for sure be traced back to stuff like ABBA (and them in particular).

A nice band to get into btw. Some nice sad melody work with lots of folkish tonality going on. But sure they had their brainless radio hit style stuff also.

I recently found out about a band on youtube called The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. The first thing I thought of was Ghost, primarily because of the imagery and costumes, but the music could have very well influenced them as well.

Holy shit dude you just blew my fucking mind!!

That's some proto-metal/dark satanic psych if I've ever heard some before from super early on at 1968 and they've got paint and a vocal sound both of which could have seriously influenced King Diamond!!!

I can't believe more people don't know about this band!!

I mean there's no way that didn't influence BOTH King Diamond and Ghost.

I'm always looking for the earliest influences to metal and how they escaped my ears thus far surprises me.

Best in a while and I'm gonna check out their other stuff and see if they have any other influences.

I mean that really kind of is early Doom/proto-metal/downer rock in my book.

Good find.

There's a perfectly good thread in the recommendations forum for this type of post. There's even a Doom Metal sticky.

And uh, Ghost is for poseurs.

I thought the same thing about him influencing King Diamond, and after doing some further research, I realized that even Kiss and Alice Cooper cite him as an influence. But yeah this blew my mind as well when I first saw/heard it, mainly because I didn't know shit like that existed in the 60s. I can only imagine peoples' reaction to that if they saw it on TV at that time!

Why do you assume people don't know of Arthur Brown? I know I do. That's where Alice Cooper started.


I'd say people were more conditioned to things like this back then, with the rise of performance art, surrealism, pop art and all kinds of experimentations. Not to mention psychedelia. Arthur Brown was a product of his time.

John Cage performed Water Walk on American television 1960. Can you think of anything corresponding to this being part of some popular tv-show today?

Ahh, so I guess even though I've been listening to metal for 25 years and have a collection of over 1,000 cds I'm a poseur cause I think they are halfway decent?

Gotcha.

Always have to check my status with the metal elitists.

For real though, they have nothing at all on the greats like Mercyful Fate, King Diamond, Pentagram, Roky Eriskon, Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Blue Oyster Cult, Uriah Heap, etc, but they are the kind of band that wears their influence on their sleeves which I like and because they remind me to look further back towards more of the origins of metal and discover bands like Arthur Brown because that's one of my favorite things to do as I'm always trying to discover old obscure gems that have gone under my radar.

They know they are derivative and let it show.

Now if you ONLY like them and don't recognize the vast superiority of REAL metal and all these other bands, you might be a poseur.

But if you know your shit and find some of their tunes catchy?

I don't think so.

Yeah, I guess I was just surprised I hadn't known about him.

I'm just usually up on all the earliest origins of metal but this guy flew under my radar.

So just now I started searching even earlier back into garage rock stuff on youtube from the 60s and even sometimes late 50s cause I'm always trying to find the earliest origins of metal and punk and of course there was nothing truly heavy before the mid 60s but if you are someone like me who also likes punk and campy horror punk., Rockabilly , Mod Rock, Garage Rock, Freak Beat, and surf rock like The Misfits, The Cramps, The Damned, Reverend Horton Heat, as well as early punk like The MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges, etc you start looking further back for their influences and discover silly yet fun early "horror-garage rock" like Screaming Lord Sutch, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, The Sonics, The Deviants, The Creation, etc, none of it very heavy, but still kind of fun, and that stuff was about as heavy as it could get in the very early 60s and late 50s, and I guess earlier than that you could even say dark Jazz like Robert Johnson from the 30s could have been the prototype for guys like Screamin' Jay Hawkins, another very early musician with dark themes to his music I'd never heard about before.

Its fun stuff cause I like 50s and 60s retro horror movies and can totally imagine that as the era of drive in campy horror movies and early rock n'roll.

I love exploring the origins of all dark music as far back as they go.

Looks like even as silly as he was that perhaps Screaming Lord Sutch could have had an influence on Arthur Brown, who then influenced Alice Cooper and Uriah Heap, who then went on to influence King Diamond and MF, etc.