Ghost reach peak melody as they swoop into the abyss on absorbingly introspective sixth album Skeletá...
Psychological subtlety and self-examination aren’t the qualities you’d immediately associate with Ghost. Tobias Forge and his Swedish ghouls have surged from strength to unholy strength, with their blend of pantomime blasphemy and flamboyantly-lit retro rock already driven as far over the top as it’s reasonable to go. And then a damn sight further still. But the inimitable mainman has spoken frankly about his desire to make this feverishly-anticipated sixth album “more introspective” than what’s come before. It’s the execution of that bold proposal that makes Skeletá Ghost's deepest, most intriguing statement to date.
Members of the congregation, fear not. Despite that cranial concept and rib-rattling album title, there’s been precious little stripping of musical flesh from the bones. Epic opener Peacefield builds from the eerie sound of a children’s choir into the kind of heart-stopping chorus that would do Survivor or Journey proud: a Satanic song of praise in the face of a world going to shit. Lachryma allows sadness to seep in, accompanied by Sabbath-worshipping weight. Then waltzing lead-single Satanized spreads its blessed black wings, seeing wicked parallels between demonic possession and falling in love.
Tobias’ ruminations manifest themselves subtly. The colour and bombast of '70s and '80s radio rock songwriting has always been part of his infernal formula, but here he seems to be connecting to the very feeling of those old recordings, embracing a slightly washed-out production and mid-tempos learned from AOR giants like Kansas and REO Speedwagon when he was a boy.
Texturally, that adds poignancy to a power ballad like Guiding Lights, and a hint of haunting sincerity to De Profundis Borealis’ trip into the wintry abyss. On Cenotaph, meanwhile, he dares incorporate classic metal playfulness into a reckoning on bereavement.
Peeling back layer after layer, a full spectrum of feeling slowly spills out: dark humour, cold existentialism, hot-blooded lust. Missilia Amori is the diabolic highlight, wrapping metaphors about ‘love rockets’ around a stomping song-structure indebted to peak KISS. In an alternate universe, the towering riffs of Marks Of The Evil One could be retitled ‘None More Black’. Earlier streaks of melancholy are brilliantly balanced out by Umbra’s heretical horniness: ‘In the shadow of the Nazarene / I put my love in you…’
Arriving alongside these new songs, Tobias’ latest imposing alter ego Papa V Perpetua – and his bat-flapped Nameless Ghouls – underlines the fact that high theatricality is still Ghost’s bread and butter. How this slightly more understated collection gels with an ever-more-ostentatious live presentation, and the catalogue of bangers already at their disposal, will be fascinating to see. But as sweeping final ballad Excelsis picks up where previous closing tracks Life Eternal (Prequelle) and Respite On The Spitalfields (Impera) left off, compelling listeners to live life to the fullest with one eye on the inevitability of death, there’s surely no-one else living quite so deliciously on the level of The Devil.
Verdict: 4/5
For fans of: Green Lung, King Diamond, Journey
Skeletá is released on April 25 via Loma Vista. Get your limited-edition vinyl bundle with art print now.
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