Prequelle, Ghost's 2018 album, was disturbingly prescient in its reflection on historic pandemics from the Black Plague to the Spanish Flu. When they abandoned early sessions in April 2020 due to COVID-19, déjà-vu must have hit hard. It took another two years to complete Impera, a hook-saturated riff celebration of floor-stomping stadium rock offering equally prescient commentary on the rise and fall of empires. Written during the contentious American presidential election of 2020, it was released during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ghost's wildly flamboyant Cardinal Copia from Prequelle has been appointed Papa Emeritus IV by an unholy see. Frontman and songwriter Tobias Forge was deeply influenced by Timothy H. Parsons' book, The Rule of Empires: Those Who Built Them, Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fall. His songs borrow from its themes, ranging across history, mystery, love, hate, pain, death, and transformation, with requisite rock pomp and grandeur. The band re-enlisted producer Klas Ahlund and mixing engineer Andy Wallace (2015's Meliora), while drawing musical inspiration from sources as varied as '80s hair metal, the theatrical rock of Jim Steinman and Andrew Lloyd Webber, and AOR sources from Queen and Metallica to early Judas Priest.

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		Griftwood
11		Bite Of Passage
12		Respite On The Spitalfields

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