Ghost's Impera made our list of the 50 Best Rock + Metal Albums of 2022, and they were also named our Artist of the Year. But what has Tobias Forge been listening to lately? In a new interview with Revolver, the frontman picked his favorite "new" album, and revealed which artist he listened to the most on Spotify this year.

Unsurprisingly, Forge admitted that he spends the majority of his time listening to older music. Based on his 2022 Spotify Wrapped stats, the band he listened to the most this year was Marillion. Though they released a new record this year titled An Hour Before It's Dark, Forge picked another choice as his favorite album of the year... though it didn't actually come out this year.

"I think that in the year that has passed, the record that surprised me, the that most made me happy was probably the new ABBA. That was a cool record," Forge said.

ABBA's latest release Voyage came out in November of 2021, so it's only a little over a year old. It was the Swedish group's first record in four decades, and the Ghost frontman was apparently really enthralled by it.

"It was surreal hearing it because, in many ways, it was like hearing a new Beatles record. Obviously there are natural reasons why a new Beatles record wouldn't happen," he explained.

"But besides Bjorn [Ulvaeus] and Benny [Andersson] being ever-active, making musicals and just being prolific songwriters and artists, the girls [Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Faltskog] have been pretty much MIA over the years, almost to the point where it feels almost like they rose from the dead coming onto this record. So it almost had that sort of resurgence from a mortal perspective feel."

Forge continued to recall ABBA's influence on him and his music, adding that Ghost's Impera was recorded in a studio in Stockholm, Sweden called Atlantis, which is where ABBA recorded most of their early albums, and the space hasn't really changed at all since then.

50 Best Rock + Metal Albums of 2022

In a year with thousands of new albums, here's the very best, presented in chronological order of release.

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