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Back in early 2013, Ghost changed their name to Ghost B.C. in the States due to legal reasons. The details of the name change were never truly explained, but for some time, the dreaded B.C. appeared along Ghost’s neo-classic band logo. However, we were told by one of Ghost’s Nameless Ghouls in an exclusive interview that the band is no longer obligated to use B.C. in its name.

Since there have been various bands called Ghost in the past, many fans assumed a lawsuit had taken place, but this is not the case. According to the Nameless Ghoul, the parent company that owns Ghost’s record label, Loma Vista, took the precaution to block a potential lawsuit.

“The thing was there was never a lawsuit,” the Ghoul explains. “It was basically, I have to just explain myself after I hang one institution out to dry here and that was not our real label, but the bigger umbrella version of our label. Unfortunately in the legal world in general, and it’s not an anti-American thing, but especially in America where people are so conscious about not being sued, obviously all corporations are extremely conscious about not getting sued. So the big major label, specifically, had a policy that said that every artist they sign must own their own name. Obviously we don’t have exclusive rights to our band name because it’s a word so commonly used. There are so many brands that have the word “ghost” that I think it’s almost un-ownable, in a way, unless it’s more specific. So it was basically a demand from the label that we added something.”

The Nameless Ghoul goes on about what B.C. actually stood for, and how though, B.C. is still in the fine print, Ghost no longer have to print the letters prominently on their releases.

“What we found least irritating was that if it was something short for something else,” the Ghoul continues. “We added the B.C. ‘Because of Copyright’ or, obviously, ‘Before Christ.’ We wanted people to still focus on Ghost. Unfortunately that leaked over into the promotional side too just because they tagged everything ‘Ghost B.C.’ everyone started calling it that. While we told every promoter and every journalist that we spoke to, ‘Don’t write Ghost B.C. because that’s not our name.’ It’s like saying, ‘I’m going to go down to McDonalds LLC or McDonalds, Inc. and buy a burger.’ So this time around, when we had a little bit of a flip within the company, we took the opportunity to raise the question and make it happen so that we don’t have to write it out on the record. There’s something extremely unromantic that’s called metadata and within the metadata in all the regions that we need to, it’s still B.C. It’s there in the fine print, but for you and I and everybody else, we don’t have to say that. So it’s Ghost now, which I’m extremely happy about.”