Meliora

Very smart clean vinyl housed in a good gloss cover. Does not have booklet.

Meliora (Latin for "the pursuit of something better") is the third studio album by Swedish rock band Ghost. The album was produced by Klas Åhlund and released on August 21, 2015.^[1] The album was generally well received, placing on several music publications' lists of the best heavy metal albums of the year and winning Best Hard Rock/Metal Album at the 2015 Grammis Awards. Lead single "Cirice" won the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance. In September 2016, the band released a special edition of the album, called Meliora Redux.

Ghost began crafting their third studio album, the follow-up to 2013's Infestissumam, at the end of 2014.^[2] The impetus for its "futuristic" theme came to a Nameless Ghoul a month or so prior to starting the Infestissumam tour. While trying out a new guitar rig during a rehearsal, the Ghoul created a "spacey echoed" effect that made a guitar riff sound "futuristic [and] sci-fi". At this point, he had the idea for their next album.^[3]

A Nameless Ghoul said that, because guitar took a backseat on Infestissumam, the band focused on guitar riffs from the beginning of the new album. He explained that part of this was achieved by having four different guitars, each played through three different amps, making four performances going through 12 amplifiers. They used two Gibson SGs, one from the early 1980s and the other from the 1960s; a 1962 Gibson Les Paul; and a Fender Telecaster.^[4]

Discussing the selection of Klas Åhlund as producer, the Ghoul said that despite his reputation for working with pop singers and having never produced a heavy metal band before, Åhlund had many of the same musical interests as Ghost.^[4] A band member also said, "I definitely think that we got a lot of ideas and a lot of new angles that we wouldn't have had, had we worked with a more established rock producer".^[5]

A member of the band said that the pre-production, writing and arranging of Meliora took a long time, not allowing for the luxury of recording any non-album songs with the exception of "Zenith", which was left off the main album but added as an extra track to a limited edition.^[6]

Tobias Forge later explained that he and Åhlund spent three months on pre-production before going to Los Angeles where they recorded the drums with a session drummer. Upon returning to Stockholm they had a "very, very lavish, stupid sort of procedure" in a large studio with multiple people coming in and going or just hanging around, of which he said "On one hand, you think it's good for morale to do that, but no, it wasn't, evidently, in the end."^[7]