Ghost : Skeletá
Transformational—no word better describes the zeitgeist-shaking zombie collective from Sweden other than, well, Ghost. With each record, the band led by Tobias Forge has changed its tunes, introducing itself as a niche, doom-centric project and slowly but surely adapting into a conventional-sounding rock band. Ghost graduated from opening for path and Mastodon in April 2012 and playing the 800-capacity El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles a year later to headlining Madison Square Garden in three months.
With each new album cycle, Forge mutates into a new character, a variation of his corpse-paint-wearing, terrifying occult priest Papa Emeritus. And, culturally, Ghost have exacted their most profound transformational effect of all: With a due respect to Slayer, Ghost is the band that has demystified satanism and made wearing wardrobe bearing upside-down crosses a trendy signifier of anti-establishment sentiment among young people on a broad scale.
Because of their unique ability to shepherd the masses—or, at least, their massive fanbase—it’s on pins and needles that fans of Ghost (who often have pins and needles stuck in various parts of their body, ironically) sit in anticipation of what mysteries the band will reveal with each subsequent record. Ghost overindulgently teased their sixth proper studio record, Skeletá, with a 20-part webisode series in which Forge—now transmogrified into Papa V Perpetua—foreshadowed that the Loma Vista Recordings LP would heavy lean into the band’s satanic imagery and themes.
Given that they’ve used that unorthodox appeal to amass a congregation of fans who can aptly be described as worshippers, it’s their right to do so—and they do with Skeletá. At the same time, it does raise questions about whether Ghost’s strongest power—its transformative ability—is fading, as ghosts inherently do in just about every anthropological spiritual belief system in which they’re part of the cast of characters. To put it another way: Just how many times can an artist, or any person, really reinvent themselves?
Well, at least six times, as Ghost successfully prove with Skeletá. Much like a traditional church mass, this congregational service begins with an inviting, soothing female voice cooing about a “Peacefield,” with a chorus of additional voices and mild wisps of keyboard painting a soft palette. It’s a far cry from the opening of Ghost’s live rituals in support of 2015’s Meliora, when an infamous “hag” of lore used to read chilling missives from a lectern before the band would then come onstage and rock out. Midway through “Peacefield,” Papa V and his band of Nameless Ghouls take control of the song midway through, finally revealing after months upon months of anticipation what listeners can expect from the new Ghost album: anthemic rock songs infiltrated with wailing guitar solos whenever the moment allows, and catchy as hell even it if means resorting to cheap licks. In other words, lite ‘80s metal, cheese ballads (“Guiding Lights”) and all.
One of the reasons Skeletá works, though, is because Ghost go down this path because it can be—and is, in the case of this record—invigorating and entertaining through and through. Don’t listen to “De Profundis Borealis” if you don’t want it stuck in your head (for the better) during the rest of your workday. And in terms of catchiness, that song’s got nothing on the masterfully composed singles “Satanized” and “Lachryma.” Indeed, the performances may seem easy at times, but Ghost have nailed their ability to mod consistently strong rock songs and know just when to teeter them toward pop or totter them toward hard rock. As for Forge? It’s hard to name a charismatic, commanding frontman in modern rock who is capable of writing lyrics as poetic as his. “At the top of the mountain, right there where it dips and connects with the night sky, reach it with me,” he sings on “Cenotaph.”
In step with the sentiment he expresses on that lyric, and in the majority of them that populate Skeletá, there is one last point that must be driven home in any discussion about Ghost. Comparisons of the band to glam or at least glam-adjacent ‘80s arena rock notwithstanding, and the costumes, and their overexposure on social media and elsewhere, Ghost have never transformed themselves in one key respect: They adore their audience. Sure, they may be crowd-pleasers, but is that an entirely bad thing, especially when it comes to mainstream music? This is not a band that would make devoted fans wait for two three hours at a venue before going onstage. Forge frequently discusses his inner struggles in his lyrics, but his underlying message is to help those who enjoy his band’s music work though those same problems.
It may be hard to see through all the corpse paint and changing identities, but he’s a guy who demonstrably wants to connect with the audience and not spend all his time in his own head. Completely free from ego he may be not, but at the core of Ghost—as they prove again with Skeletá—is not evil but love. And, hopefully, through all their past, present and future transformations, that is something that will never change.
Label: Loma Vista
Year: 2025
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Ghost : Skeleta
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