Ghost announce 5th studio album, Impera, debut haunting new single, Call Me Little Sunshine

Tobias Forge-fronted heavy metal outfit Ghost have announced their new album Impera, and have shared the effort’s second single, Call Me Little Sunshine.

The upcoming record will be Ghost’s fifth studio LP and their first in four years after the release of 2018’s Grammy-nominated Prequelle. We don’t have long to wait, either: it will arrive via Loma Vista/Concord on March 11.

Joining up with Hunter’s Moon – which arrived last September – Call Me Little Sunshine is a haunting encapsulation of Ghost’s hard-rocking sound, serving up a favorable mix of pristine cleans and brooding high-gain electric guitars akin to the stomping riffs of AC/DC’s Hells Bells.

The staggered rhythmic turnarounds between each passage draw heavily on the rock classic, though Forge and co maintain the Ghost tone with a decidedly infectious guitar solo, assembled from a range of pentatonic licks and scale runs.

Call Me Little Sunshine is accompanied by a phantasmagoric music video directed by Matt Mahurin, which stars Ruby Modine of Happy Death Day and Shameless.

According to the band, Impera will take listeners hundreds of years forward from Prequelle’s 14th-century Europe Black Plague era, and musically charts the rise and fall of empires.

In the studio, Klas Åhlund helmed production duties while Andy Wallace masterminded mixing.

The full tracklist for Impera can be found below.

1. Imperium  
2. Kaisarion  
3. Spillways  
4. Call Me Little Sunshine  
5. Hunter’s Moon  
6. Watcher In The Sky  
7. Dominion  
8. Twenties  
9. Darkness At The Heart Of My Love  
10. Grift Wood  
11. Bite Of Passage  
12. Respite On The Spital Fields  

Ghost, who will be hitting the road for a 26-date US tour with Volbeat on January 25, have also announced the Imperatour, which will see Forge and his clan of Nameless Ghouls perform a wealth of headline arena shows in UK and Europe.

We saw this coming, though: last year, Forge told Sweden Rock Magazine that "we will not release an album until we know we are going on tour. It will coincide with a tour start".

For a full list of tour dates, head over to Ghost’s website.

• Impera is available to preorder now ahead of its March 11 release.