GHOULS DEPT.- FOR THE LOVE OF SATAN

The Swedish hard-rock band GHOST appeared on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” last month. When the group formed, in Linköping, in 2006, its members were anonymous, and their devotion to Satan was deep and jubilant. On a track from GHOST’s first album, the vocalist Tobias Forge offered up a demonic mandate:

- —Amanda Petrusich

“Believe in one God, do we? / Satan almighty.” Since then, GHOST has cooled it a little with the devil worship, though it has not exactly gone soft: the song “Mary on a Cross,” from 2019 (“You go down / Just like Holy Mary”), was decried as blasphemous, and the band’s American tours are still protested by wild-eyed church groups, who encircle venues and wave signs reading “Satan Has NO Rights.” These days, Forge’s identity is known, though he continues to be backed by a rotating cabal of so-called Nameless Ghouls. (There were seven Ghouls hanging out backstage at “The Tonight Show,” dressed in black hoods or top hats, masks, and glittering skeleton suits.)