Get The Shot
“The biggest problem that art has nowadays is that it doesn’t hurt anymore,” says GHØSTKID vocalist and agent provocateur Sebastian “Sushi” Biesler. “Especially here in Germany, people are so afraid to push boundaries. To make art that makes you think and feel.” It’s not surprising that with GHØSTKID’s second album, Hollywood Suicide, Sushi and company have looked outside the confines of their native country to fuel their energized, hook-laden brand of nu-metalcore. The results are as heartfelt as they are both musically ambitious and sonically seamless. Now, more than ever, GHØSTKID trade in a brand of goth-nu-rock-core that’s sure to push the already high-bar set by GHØSTKID’s 2020’s self-monikered, pandemic-sidelined Century Media debut.
By fall 2021, with the world shutdown seemingly over, Sushi wasn’t content to let his creative yen languish at home in Germany. “Even though we had made it through Covid, I was missing being able to play live, to really function as a band,” says Sushi. “It didn’t feel real to me. I became distanced from the music.” A six-week decampment to Los Angeles became the creative fuel for GHØSTKID’s next steps. The last vestiges of Hollywood sleaze, decaying glamour, personal temptation and the still-vibrant creative vibes of the city became the frontman’s “don’t-look-before-you-leap” inspiration for the gestating Hollywood Suicide. “That trip allowed me a lot of creative access to myself,” says Sushi. “I came back with a different perspective on things. I moved to Berlin. I went through a lot of personal changes and started to see things in a different, more open light. It made me want to make the next album a concept album.”
From the trap-metal inspired beats and crushing metalcore riffing that opens the album’s title track to the disquieting melodies of elegiac closer “Helena Drive”, HOLLYWOOD SUICIDE is a perfect snapshot of an artist finding himself, crawling from his own personal wreckage against a crumbling, mythical Californian milieu. “You could compare [the album] to the story of someone like Marilyn Monroe,” Sushi explains. “That’s why ’HOLLYWOOD SUICIDE’ is the first track. If you really want to make it, you have to give a lot. You have to be willing to give up everything. It’s kind of like suicide to the person that you’ve been when you become an artist.”
Sushi’s brand of personal “suicide” kicked off in 2019. Following his heart and artistic muse, the frontman opted for something darker – a musical plunge into darkness, aggression, ugliness, and beauty. Connecting with producer Sky van Hoff, those musical first instincts – inspired by a steady diet of Nine Inch Nails, Fever 333 and Bring Me the Horizon – became the crux of GHØSTKID’s self-titled first album. Bringing it to the stage is where Sushi & Co crystalized that vision. The glam-goth troupe won over fans at massive European festivals including Summer Breeze and Wacken Open Air and supporting Bad Omens on a sold out European tour. With the band’s lineup rounded out by guitarists Jappo van Glory and Chris Kisseler, bassist Stanni Czywil and drummer Steve Joakim, GHØSTKID live is a spectacle: Sushi bedecked in a funeral dress, smeared makeup, menace and bad intents while the band members charge around the stage, a ghoulish gaggle hellbent on making shock factor their musical weapon of choice.
“Live is where it’s the most real, the most in the moment,” says Sushi. “There’s no sense of boundaries, no sense of gender. I wear what I like as long as it looks cool. GHØSTKID, for me, is how I express my art through the music and my persona. When it comes down to art, you should be free.” GHØSTKID will be bringing their melody and chaos to American stages for the first time in the spring of 2024 opening for Black Veil Brides following a European tour with labelmates Blind Channel.
Once more teamed with producer Sky van Hoff, HOLLYWOOD SUICIDE is indeed GHØSTKID’s ticket to massive audiences worldwide. Track-for-genre-defying-track, it’s part concept album, part panorama of Sushi’s hedonistic head-trips and twisted visions. “FSU” is a grinding nu-metal basher that doesn’t let up from start to finish while “Heavy Rain “continues the album’s storyline with an emotion-packed chorus that screams with the album’s sense of personal and artistic desperation. “It ties into the album’s story of the main character getting hurt for the first time, getting into drugs, and eventually overdosing on [the song] ‘Valerie’,” says Sushi. “’Black Cloud’ picks up right after that. She wakes up to find Hollywood on fire. The dream is not the same anymore I think that’s a universal feeling.” The album crescendos with “Murder”, a collaboration with German electronic music producer INHUMAN that transports the album into a trap-driven cyber-punk dystopia of sound.
With GHØSTKID’s next chapter, Sushi isn’t content to stay in the same metalcore milieu. Hollywood Suicide takes everything you already know about the band and amps it up. “It’s a journey,” the frontman says. “I’ve been able to be a lot more honest with myself as well. I come back to that special feeling, my original motivation when I was 15 playing guitar and wanting to be a rockstar. This is my dream – but it can also be my nightmare. That’s what HOLLYWOOD SUICIDE is really about.”