Ghost had already clawed their way clear of the underground by the time they released their third album, 2015’s Meliora, but to get to the next level they required the kind of all-conquering anthem that would serve as a focal point for everything that made them stand out in the first place. That song would be Square Hammer, the lead track and sole original song on Ghost’s second EP, Popestar.
Ghost mastermind Tobias Forge’s ambitions had been writ large on Meliora. With Cirice, From The Pinnacle To The Pit and Majesty, the band earned radio play in the US for the first time. As Tobias would remark: “You can have a career in America without radio… but it definitely helps.”
In April 2016, just nine months after the release of Meliora, Tobias entered Gardenia Studio in his hometown of Linköping to record Popestar. Where 2013’s Dave Grohl-produced If You Have Ghost EP was comprised entirely of covers, plus a live rendition of 2012 single Secular Haze, Tobias had an idea for a new song to kick off Popestar and showcase his ambitions to kick Ghost to the next level.
Square Hammer had been written and earmarked for Meliora, but it wasn’t finished in time. But Tobias wouldn’t let the song go.
“I felt very strongly about it and we agreed we needed to release it,” Tobias told Metal Hammer in 2016, “so suddenly we were recording a covers EP that’s Square Hammer and four B-sides.”
Tobias had a very specific idea in mind for the song. “We needed a big opening track,” he told Loudwire in 2018. “When I was a kid, there was a concert called the Moscow Music Peace Festival [held in 1989].
“Ozzy Osbourne opened with I Don’t Know and it’s such a fucking great opening track. This was in front of, like, 80,000 people, who went nuts. If you ever want to play bigger places, you need to have records that sound like you’re playing in big places.”
Square Hammer offered just that. Driven by an undulating riff and underpinned with organ-like keyboards and enormous vocal hooks, the track was the first major signifier that Ghost were no longer singing purely from the Sabbath-via-Blue Öyster Cult hymn sheet.
Lyrically, Square Hammer is enigmatic even by Ghost’s standards. The song seems to suggest that people profess their faith to the Devil rather than God – something that ties in with Meliora’s theme of the Anti-Christ establishing a rein of Earth.
The Popestar EP was released in September 2016. Opening with Square Hammer, it also featured covers of Echo & The Buunymen’s Nocturnal Me, Simian Mobile Disco’s I Believe, Eurythmics’ Missionary Man and Bible by cult Swedish post-punks Imperiet.
But it was Square Hammer that would be the most pivotal song of Ghost’s career to that point. The track gave Ghost their first No.1 outside of their native Sweden when it topped the Billboard Mainstream Rock Charts in the US.
“Square Hammer was an additional, surprise, sort of out-of-nowhere track and went to No.1,” Tobias told Loudwire. “It was a huge thing, at that point. Meliora was the first record where we had any radio in America, but Square Hammer was the one that put us in a position where we were a force to be reckoned with on radio.”
Of course, radio wasn’t solely responsible for the song’s success. A Nosferatu-inspired music video directed by Zev Deans captured the band’s aesthetic shift from grainy 70s Hammer horror imagery to a classic 30s Universal Monsters vibe.
In the promo, Papa Emeritus III attends a film première for an old-school gothic horror that goes awry when a familiar papal spectre escapes the screen and terrorises both the audience and the wider city at large.
Shot in Brooklyn, the video for Square Hammer immediately became a beloved part of the band’s videography, to date amassing 115 million views on YouTube.
The song also became the instant live staple that Tobias had aimed for. The opening song on the first night of The Popestar Tour in Rochester, New York on September 16, 2016, the song’s anthemic prowess was quickly proven. It remained the opening number for the entire Popestar tour, including for Ghost’s first European headline shows at Alcatraz in Belgium and Bloodstock in the UK.
Although the song didn’t retain its opener status forever, it has remained in their setlists for just about every show they’ve played since its release. It was also picked up as the theme song for livestreamed wrestling extravaganza NXT TakeOver: San Antonio in January 2017, and has in many ways become Ghost’s defining anthem – the song that turned them from cult sensations to ascendant stars.
“Square Hammer had a major effect,” Tobias admitted to Loudwire. “It served as a really good opener and now it serves as a really good closer.”