The Swedish rock group Ghost will be pushing the release of their album back by a year for a very good reason, according to Consequence of Sound.

The group’s frontman, Tobias Forge, has gone on record stating that even though the album will be done by it’s initial 2020 release date, the group has decided to release it in 2021 as to not have their album drowned out by all the commotion that comes with the United State’s Presidential Election.

The album, which is unnamed at the moment, came announced in tandem with a movie about the band in early May, as mxdwn reported previously and will feature the return of Forge’s character Cardinal Copia, who was heavily featured in live shows before the band’s previous album Prequelle was released. Forge suggested that if Copia was strong enough the band could “basically to do two cycles.”

Forge told Overdrive that he originally would have liked to have started work on the album in January 2020, allowing six months of work before shooting for a summer release date but that thoughts of the U.S. election had him wary of releasing an album the same year.

“Unfortunately or fortunately, depends on how you see it, the US elections are happening, so bearing that in mind, it’s not the best time to release new material when people’s minds are focused on other things.” Forge said in the Overdrive interview. “I just want to make sure that when we release this new album, we have people’s attention.”

Forge said that this decision came after the group has had to learn the lesson the hard way previously. “Some of our previous releases were not released at a time that was in our favour. In fact, I have memories of things being very stressful at times. At this point in the band’s legacy, it’s far too important to just release the next album with no plan or strategy put in place first. Also, it’s very important that we give the production of the album a few weeks of rehearsal. Basically, we have to plan it like a rocket launch.”

Photo Credit: Ekaterina Gorbacheva