Turned to cinders with my own wicked hands

June 3, 2015, 9:55 p.m. It's a chilly early summer day in Linköping, but inside Agatanklubben Doom (Nightclub Doom) it's boiling hot. To the tune of "Monstrance Clock," the newly inaugurated Pope Papa Emeritus Ill and his entourage leave the stage. Getting a ticket was basically impossible, but the organizers manage to squeeze in a full 700 people - packed in tightly. But no one inside knows that it will be a decade before Ghost plays for the Linköping audience again. Or what will happen in between. 

A high-profile trial in Linköping District Court, where some of the band's musicians sued leader Tobias Forge, of course. But above all, Ghost has released four acclaimed albums, several new popes and cardinals have been presented, and the band has grown into an even greater worldwide phenomenon. 

At the time of writing, the new album Skeletá is at number one on the Billboard charts, the first Swedish album since 1993. And now, on May 22, Ghost is finally playing in his hometown again. When tickets went on sale, they sold out in just a few minutes. 

Ten years without a gig in Linköping - why has it taken so long?

  - The unsexy reason is that Linköping is too close to Stockholm. Ghost plays quite rarely in Sweden and if they do play a gig, it has often been Stockholm, Gothenburg or Malmö. Then there has been some pressure from above where they have said that if we play in Linköping we will cannibalize a possible second gig in Sweden. But this time I felt: "Then we'll screw up the second gig and play in Linköping instead", says Tobias Forge when we meet at the record label's office in Östermalm in Stockholm.

 You had to put your foot down and say, "Now we're doing this"?

- Yes, and when I said it, they were like: " Huh? What did you say?" but I insisted that we do it. And now that it's almost a fact, it feels really fun. I don't know if we'll ever do a gig on that scale again in Linköping.

We start talking about his childhood and upbringing. What places have shaped him and made him who he is today? 

Tobias Jens Forge was born on March 3, 1981 in Linköping. At the time, the family lived at Repslagaregatan 10A, near where Uncle Mellin's Square is today. At the time, the city's police station was located there, and Tobias remembers how, as a three-year-old, he found it exciting to watch the constables through the apartment window. When he turned four, he and his family, which mainly consisted of his mother Siv and his 13-year-old brother Sebastian, moved to Tegelbruksgatan in Tannefors, with windows facing the district's main street.

- Nya Tanneforsvägen is my ancestral home. It was the avenue that led into the city and away from it. That's where all dreams were born. Tannefors is a magical place for me. It was like living in a small town, just outside the city. And the district was interesting because it was both a villa area and an apartment building area at the same time. In terms of age, there was a mix between families with children and 20-year-olds who lived in studios. Then, in terms of socio-economics, there was the whole spectrum; those who lived down by the river and had money, the parents who lived together and had a car and so on. On the other side of Nya Tanneforsvägen there were homes with quite chaotic conditions.

- Nya Tanneforsvägen still lives in me today. In that I grew up in a kind of inner city environment, along a busy street where there were always people, life and the sound of honking. I am still completely addicted to that. I always have to be able to open the window and hear life going on outside.

You're not a country boy?

- No.

The rock dreams came early. Linköpings filmmaker Claudio Marino, who went to the same daycare center as Tobias, tells the podcast Ny Moral that he remembers little Tobias drawing the Rolling Stones tongue the first time they met. Tobias himself remembers how, as a three-four-year-old, he saw the music video for Scorpions' "Rock you like a hurricane" on TV and how it transformed his entire worldview. 

- It was drums and guitars and Scorpions in some kind of cage. The whole thing woke something up in me and when it dawned on me that you could actually make a living as a rock idol, it felt really relevant.

Tobias lived in Linköping until he was 16, when he and his mother Siv moved up to Stockholm. There, high school didn't work at all - he had

80 percent absences and he collected "about 20 IGs”. But the rock star dream was still alive, even though the music had become even harder than Scorpions. He fronted the death metal band Repugnant and played in an early version of the sleaze rock band Crashdiet. Although he himself felt then and there that his breakthrough was around the corner, it was never really close. At the same time, he lived on grants and felt rejected by the music industry in the capital. When he was 25 years old, he moved back to Linköping and a second-hand shop on Apotekaregatan. Career suicide, some might say, but Tobias had an intuitive feeling that it was the right step to take. It felt like a liberation. Once back on the plains, he played in the bands Subvision and Magna Carta Cartel. These bands included guitarists Martin Persner and Simon Söderberg, both of whom ended up playing in the new project - Ghost. 

Kent has done an audio-guided walk in Eskilstuna - what would a Tobias Forge walk look like in Linköping? 

- If I were to tell it, it would be very long... Yes, what would such a walk be like? Geographically, you could start down in Hawaii in Tannefors and then go up to my red preschool on Stationsgatan. My home is on Tegelbruksgatan 9 and then my entire elementary school education is along Nya Tanneforsvägen, the avenue of broken dreams, Tanneforsskolan and Kungsbergsskolan.T hen we continue over Drottningbron and at that time, when I grew up in Linköping, the bus station was on Magasinstorget, it was like the whole city was opened up there and it doesn't feel quite the same today. But we continue the walk up Nygatan and there I would bore everyone by telling them how many fucking record stores there were on the strip between Trädgärdstorget, via Tanneforsgatan up to Stora Torget. There were five or six record stores in between. They were all warp zones into another, more fun reality. And then we have the music stores and video stores... Yes, this walk could have been endless. 

It sounds like there are many places that have meant a lot to you in Linköping. 

- Of course. And we haven't really talked about places outside Tannefors and the inner city. Venues like Skylten and the rehearsal rooms in Bullerbyn? - When I really started playing in a band, we had a rehearsal space in Bullerbyn and l've probably been there more than I've been to Skylten actually. That place has really meant a lot to me. I was there for the first time in 1990 maybe and we recorded parts of the first Ghost album there in 2010. In between, it was as if time had stood still in Bullerbyn, I remember the corridor with posters looking exactly the same.

Videos on Ghost's social media mention "Lincopia, Otrogothia" as Ghost's headquarters. Does Ghost make more nods to Linköping? 

- Yes, absolutely. The Linköping municipal lion was embroidered in one of the popes' robes, but it has also been featured elsewhere in symbols and logos. Then I think most people have missed that we used the windows from the old bank premises on St Larsgatan, opposite S:t Larskyrkan, in our backdrop at concerts. You can see that quite clearly if you know about it. Then of course there is the Cathedral. The church on the cover of the first album is suspiciously similar to it.

Has the Cathedral been a place you have gone to? 

- I really like the Cathedral, it is a very beautiful place and, like many others in Linköping, it has had a great impact on me. Especially from an architectural and historical perspective. I have been there all my life, partly for funerals and masses and things that you have attended. As a parent of small children, I was there often because it was a lovely place to come with the children and walk around. I have many memories of being there as a child too. My mother is passionate about art and history, so l must have had some kind of Indiana Jones adventure in there. That has probably been how it has affected me the most, as a place of adventure more than spiritual. Not that I don't feel the whispers in the walls and the anxiety that probably lived between them. I find that very easy to come into contact with. No, it has above all been the adventure and the imaginativeness of the building that has affected me.

Time is running out, but I blame Tobias Forge for wanting to keep talking about his hometown - and who am I to interrupt him? Maybe that's why the gig in Linköping feels like more than just a tour stop.