Tobias Forge says he won’t make another Ghost album without a reason, and calls the break a normal hiatus.
Tobias Forge has explained why Ghost stopped, and the answer is not that anything went wrong. In a cover interview with Kerrang!, the singer said he reached the end of “Skeletour” without an idea for what came next and decided that was reason enough to stop rather than push on.
“Everything was great up until the moment when I was sort of eyeing the end of a tour and not knowing for the first time in our career what to do next,” Forge said. “And that was kind of the get-the-f**k-out-of-Dodge card, which is: I’m not gonna just go back to make an album or force myself to make an album for no reason. I need to want to make a record. I need to have something to say.”
He drew a line between that and how the previous records came about.
“Every other record has been very inspired and there’s been a clear thought, there’s been a purpose,” he explained. “And that was completely generated by my passion to do so — it was never contractual fulfilment or whatever. It was nothing like that. And this time around it was just like, ‘I don’t have an idea.’ I just want to do other things and it doesn’t really mean anything other than that, but it also means that, no, we don’t have anything in the books, and yeah, it’s just a normal hiatus.”
Forge said the obligation that usually drives him had started working the other way.
He continued: “There’s a lot of people depending on you, let alone all these people buying tickets. For most of my career, I’ve been very triggered by that, in a positive way. But now, with a lack of a clear direction of where to go, I don’t want to have that responsibility on my shoulder. I can carry that when I’m there, but when I’m not there, it’s too tiresome.”
He described himself as exhausted after the tour, and said he is enjoying being at home and working on things unconnected to the band, rather than following the usual cycle of record, tour, and straight back into a studio.
Regarding how close “Skeletour” came to what he had been building towards, Forge said it was about as close as the format allows.
“Pretty much as close as you can get. When you’re done with the big wedding, you’re not gonna get married again immediately after. I don’t want to call it a bookend, but it serves as a great finale. I feel like, ‘If this is it, I’m pretty pleased. This is a f**king great repertoire, great band, they sound phenomenal.’ We managed to do this awesome show most of the nights, and I couldn’t be happier,” he said.
The other projects are already surfacing. Forge sang on a re-recording of Accept‘s “Save Us” earlier this month alongside Anthrax bassist Frank Bello and Korn drummer Ray Luzier, and Ghost have been confirmed for the soundtrack of the video game “Stage Tour“.
The band also had a good night at home. Skeletá took the Hard Rock and Metal award at the Swedish Grammis this year, from six nominations that included Artist Of The Year and Album Of The Year.
The tour ran to 70 shows across Europe, North America and Mexico. The European leg came first in April and May 2025, straight off the back of Skeletá; North America followed from July to September; and the final run went from January into February this year, closing at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood.
Part of the reason it stopped where it did was that the production had outgrown the venues capable of holding it, which is where “2 Big To Rig” takes its name from. The film, shot over the two Mexico City nights in September 2025, reached cinemas and IMAX yesterday, with the live album out today.
One detail the film does not hide: the first of the three planned Mexico City shows was lost to Forge falling ill, something he makes a joke of onstage during the two that went ahead.
During a February interview on Full Metal Jackie‘s radio show, he used a construction metaphor to describe the profound exhaustion that comes with single-handedly steering the massive occult rock project:
“Imagine you being a house builder, and you draw up houses, great ideas, but you’re also doing the permits and you’re also doing the tiles and you’re building everything and you’re sewing up all that [s**t] and putting it all together. I don’t simply have an idea. And I’m out of tiles. I’m out of wood. I just don’t have it.”
“So the only way for me to come up with a new idea and get some new inspiration is to just step away. It is as simple as that,” he added.
Reflecting on the all-consuming nature of Ghost, which he described as a “force majeure” in his life, the singer admitted he is finally at peace with the idea of taking his foot off the gas pedal.
“And over the years I’ve been very worried about momentum and just keeping it going because I have so many ideas and I don’t wanna lose speed. And I just came to a point where I’m, like, I’m actually fine if the momentum is not there. It’s cool. I’m good. I feel good about that. If I lose it, okay.”
The hiatus also allows him to make up for lost time with his family. Tobias spoke candidly about the emotional toll that years of global touring took on his home life when his children were younger.
“And there were a lot of moments where you had to sort of sneak out before they woke up and have one screaming child on the balcony, sort of, when you jump into the car. And that was not easy. But when you’re driven by a conviction, and I was convinced, and I am still convinced, that I did the right thing, of course.”
“Of course. They’re 17. Of course they know what I’m doing. Of course they’re aware of… And we are very connected. We’re very good friends. We speak about anything. And they’re very aware of my thought processes and where I am, how I feel about things. And they’re big enough and vocalizing enough to be able to explain. And we can have a conversation about how they felt as kids, me being away a lot. But now they’re the ones sort of pushing me, like, ‘Yeah, it’s only three weeks left,’ whereas in the past it was always, like, when I was gonna be away for seven weeks or nine weeks, it was hard for them to fathom, of course, what that timeframe is.”
“When I come back, we’ll start this new chapter, this new reality,” he stated.
