Ghost – Phantomime

The Ghost Phantomime vinyl is a covers LP from one of heavy music’s most theatrically ambitious acts, released on Loma Vista Recordings under catalog number LVR 3263. It arrives as a direct companion to Impera, the internationally chart-topping record that preceded it, and was conceived as part of that same creative cycle rather than a stopgap between studio albums.

Ghost and the Weight of Influence

Ghost is the project of Swedish songwriter Tobias Forge, built around a rotating cast of anonymous backing musicians known as the Nameless Ghouls. The band made its name on melodic hooks wrapped in heavy riffs and an elaborate papal-occult theatrical identity. Over the course of several studio albums they moved progressively toward accessibility, which split their fanbase but expanded their reach considerably. The Grammy win confirmed what their live audiences already knew: this is a band that understands craft, pageantry, and how to make a hook land. Phantomime gives that sensibility a very specific test. When a band this focused on its own mythology steps outside it to interpret other writers, you learn something about where their instincts actually come from.

What Ghost Phantomime Vinyl Delivers

The tracklist works through a genuinely diverse range of source material. Television, Genesis, The Stranglers, Iron Maiden and Tina Turner are among the artists represented, which tells you a lot about the span of Ghost’s actual influences and the breadth Forge is working across here. These are not obvious choices arranged as a single stylistic bloc. The selection moves between post-punk, art rock, classic heavy metal and pop, and Ghost’s job on each track is to filter that material through their own voice without flattening what made the original worth covering. Whether that works for you will depend on how you feel about the source material and how much you trust the band’s instincts, but the ambition of the curation is not in question.

The Pressing and Why It Belongs in Your Collection

This is the standard LP pressing on Loma Vista, catalog LVR 3263. For collectors building out a Ghost discography on vinyl, Phantomime occupies a specific and non-redundant place. It is not a filler release. It was planned as part of the Impera era from the beginning, which means it functions as a document of that creative period rather than an afterthought. Covers records pressed on vinyl carry something that streaming does not: a physical artifact that marks a band’s willingness to declare their influences in a permanent format. For Ghost, a band deeply invested in presentation and intent, that specificity matters. This is a record that rewards the collector who wants the full picture of where Ghost sits in the longer history of heavy, melodic, theatrically minded rock.