Tobias Forge Explains Why It’s A Problem To Cover Metallica Songs

In a new interview with Audacity Check-In, Ghost frontman Tobias Forge has talked about his band covering Enter Sandman from Metallica in The Blacklist Album and explained the problem he had singing Metallica‘s songs.

Tobias Forge is a Swedish singer who came to prominence for being the leader and primary songwriter of the masked rock band Ghost, which was formed in 2006. At press time, Ghost released 4 studio albums and Tobias Forge performed in all stuff.

As you know, Ghost is one of those who covered Enter Sandman from Metallica for the band’s The Blacklist Album, which includes Miley Cyrus’ Nothing Else Matters cover with Elton John, Chad Smith, Corey Taylor’s Holier Than Thou, and more.

Recently, Tobias Forge has talked about what it’s like to cover Metallica compared with the other artists. At first, the interviewer asked Forge that whether his previous Metallica cover was a natural choice. Touching on his band’s participation on The Blacklist, Forge also mentioned why his band made its previous covers.

“I think I might have briefly considered something else but as we were asked to participate in that, on the ‘Blacklist,'” Forge said.

“I think it was quite clear, at least in my head, that we were gonna put together a real recorded version of ‘Enter Sandman.’

“The concept of making covers, and I’m not trying to in any way… All the songs that we’ve ever covered have been subpar songs that we wanted to fix.

“But sometimes when you decide to cover something, at least in my world, at least in my head, in my heart, I feel that I need to do something to them that either puts it forward in terms of sound – it could be something that’s simple – or there’s some sort of skewing with it.”

Forge Admits It’s Hard To Cover Metallica As His Own Creativity

Later than, Forge exampled his words by recalling his band’s The Beatles cover Here Comes The Sun. Commenting on why so many artists cover Bob Dylan, the singer admitted at the end that it’s hard to cover Metallica as his own comment.

“We did ‘Here Comes the Sun’ years ago, which is obviously a very, very happy, summery track, and it was turned into this minor very dark, almost nuclear track,” Forge continues.

“And I think that historically, one of the most covered pop artists, popular cultural artist, Bob Dylan – the reason why a lot of artists have covered him is not only because the tracks are so good, but it’s also because his own versions of his own tracks are usually very, very bare-boned.

“And they’re sort of insinuating the melody. You hear the melody and as a singer, you just want to sing it out, you want to sort of flesh it out more.

“The problem with Metallica songs, the songs are so fleshed-out, they’re so cemented, there’s really no room for interpretation in my head.”

Back in this past September, James Hetfield had revealed the main reason behind their decision to make The Blacklist Album. He revealed the thing Metallica is very fearful of.

“We think outside the box and we try to be the first at things,” he said. “There’s no nostalgia driving this band – we used to be very fearful of it…

“There was a lot of ego and showing off on [1988’s] […And] Justice [for All].’

“Going out and playing ‘Justice’ live, the songs were eight, nine, 10 minutes long.”