Impera

Impera is the fifth studio album by the Swedish band Ghost, released on 11 March 2022 through Loma Vista Recordings. Klas Ahlund produced it, as he had Meliora in 2015. Its subject is the rise and fall of empires. Tobias Forge told the radio station KLAQ in 2021 that the idea went back to 2013, when he picked up Timothy Parsons's The Rule of Empires in Left Bank Books, an independent shop in Seattle's Pike Place Market. He is interested, he said, in history and culture and in how empires are built and why they always fall apart, and he knew on the spot that he would make an imperial record. Several outside writers worked on the songs, among them the pop producers Salem Al Fakir and Vincent Pontare, Joakim Berg of Kent and Peter Svensson of The Cardigans. Three singles came first. "Hunter's Moon" appeared on 30 September 2021 in support of the film Halloween Kills, with a version used over its closing credits; "Call Me Little Sunshine" followed on 20 January 2022 and "Twenties" on 2 March. At the last show of the Prequelle tour in Mexico City in March 2020, Cardinal Copia had become Papa Emeritus IV, and he is the figurehead of this record. The order here is the twelve tracks of the American CD, LVR02403.