Superior and Repugnant and Crashdïet Forge was a member of the band Superior under the stage name Leviathan in 1996. There were two Superior demos called "Metamorphis" (1996) and "Illustrare ad Infernali" (1997). He fronted the
Stockholm-based
death metal band
Repugnant from 1998, under the stage name Mary Goore, which
Metal Hammer reported is a play on the name of Northern Irish guitarist
Gary Moore. They recorded their only studio album
Epitome of Darkness in 2002, but it was left unreleased when the band broke up in 2004, only being published in 2006. Between 2000 and 2002, Forge was also a guitarist for
glam metal band
Crashdïet using the Mary Goore name. At some point he also played guitar for the
punk rock band
Onkel Kånkel. Repugnant briefly reunited for the Hell's Pleasure festival in 2010.
Subvision and Magna Carta Cartel From 2002 to 2008, Forge was vocalist and guitarist of the
pop rock band Subvision. The group also included future Ghost members Martin Persner and Gustaf Lindström on guitar and bass respectively. They released two EPs and one album,
So Far So Noir (2006), before disbanding. Forge, Persner and Simon Söderberg, another future Ghost member, were also members of the
Linköping-based
alternative rock band
Magna Carta Cartel (or MCC) from 2006 to 2010. Forge played guitar and bass, with Persner and Söderberg both handling guitar and singing duties. The band went on hiatus when all three began to focus on Ghost. Persner left Ghost in July 2016 and reformed Magna Carta Cartel.
Ghost Since 2006, Forge has acted as chief songwriter and business leader of the rock and heavy metal band Ghost, a project and role that contributed to a significant rise in his fame and popularity, following many years of involvement in other underground acts. During live performances with the band, he performs as its singer. Each album has a 'new singer': originally Papa Emeritus I through to III—a demonic anti-pope—and then Cardinal Copia, who became Papa Emeritus IV in March 2020. Peter Hällje, a former bandmate of Martin Persner, claimed he designed the Papa Emeritus character in 2005, prior to the formation of Ghost. Hällje never performed as Papa Emeritus and agreed with Persner to let him use the character for his then-new band. For recorded material, Forge seems to also play most of the other instruments in addition to vocals. For example, he claimed that the 2010 debut album,
Opus Eponymous, was recorded with a session drummer and nothing else. In 2012, during a concert in the band's hometown of Linköping, Sweden, Papa Emeritus was seemingly retired and replaced by a new vocalist, Papa Emeritus II, but this was actually Forge in another costume. The band's second album,
Infestissumam, was released in 2013. Due to a legal dispute over the band's name, they were forced to release the album using the name "Ghost B.C." in the United States. Forge performed as Papa Emeritus II for this album, as well as the subsequent EP,
If You Have Ghost (2013). Papa Emeritus III was introduced in 2015 to coincide with the release of the band's third album,
Meliora. Papa Emeritus III was retired at the end of Ghost's 2016–2017
Popestar Tour (being physically dragged off stage at the end of the final show), and a new character, Papa Emeritus Zero (now known as Papa Nihil), was introduced immediately afterward. Forge is credited as Papa Nihil on the two-track release
Seven Inches of Satanic Panic, which is purported by the band to have been recorded in 1969. For Ghost's fourth album,
Prequelle (2018), Forge adopted another new persona, Cardinal Copia. During the final show of
A Pale Tour Named Death, Cardinal Copia was anointed and introduced as Papa Emeritus IV. Papa V Perpetua was revealed as the new frontman for Ghost on 5 February 2025; making his first appearance in the music video of the band's single "Satanized". Despite anonymity being one of Ghost's biggest themes, Forge's identity as Papa Emeritus was revealed following a lawsuit in April 2017 by former Ghost members over a royalties dispute. They also claimed he was trying to transform Ghost "from a band into a solo project with hired musicians" in an "underhanded and shameless way". Forge has disputed this, claiming that Ghost "was always sort of… I guess a
Bathory sort of band, where there was people playing live, and the people playing live [were] not necessarily the same that played on the records." Forge claimed that "no legal partnership" ever existed between the other members and himself; they were paid a fixed salary to perform and execute the band's image as he instructed as "musicians for hire." ==Musical style==