Ex-Ghost Members’ Accusations In opposition to Tobias Forge

Anonymity had been one of Ghost’s major elements, but all the secrecy behind the band fell apart when things took a turn toward a court filled with lawyers.

Former members of Ghost, Simon Söderberg, Mauro Rubinho, Henrik Palm, and Martin Hjertstedt filed a lawsuit in 2017 against frontman Tobias Forge, claiming the singer didn’t pay any of their wages or allowances.

Soon after the lawsuit went public, Forge decided to respond to his former ‘bandmates’ accusations, and he also had his own claims. The rocker, then only dubbed as Papa Emeritus, stated in a legal correspondence that the accusers never had ‘official’ ties with him nor the band, claiming that they weren’t ‘former bandmates’ at all.

Forge further stated that Ghost worked with different musicians all the time and had constant lineup changes. Then, he revealed all the lineup changes that had taken place up until that year and accused Söderberg, Rubinho, Palm, and Hjertstedt of ‘ruining’ the band’s anonymity.

The court, however, didn’t dismiss the case and put it into motion. However, after the frontman’s legal team issued legal bindings that proved the accusers didn’t have any legal ties with Ghost, the verdict favored Forge and the court dismissed the lawsuit in 2018.

A Swedish newspaper at the time even reported Forge’s legal victory and stated that the four accusers had to pay all the costs the lawsuit brought which exceeded up to $1.3 million.

Although ‘former bandmembers’ accused the singer of ‘trying to transform Ghost into a one-man project,’ Forge seemed never secretive about that as he even once claimed that Ghost was supposed to be a Bathory-like band where studio session musicians needed to be different from the live musicians that took the stage with him. So, there was no constancy in Ghost.