Watch: Ghost unveil new song Kaiserion on first night of U.S. tour

Last night (January 25), Ghost kicked off their huge U.S. co-headline tour with Volbeat at the Reno Events Center in Nevada.

And, as well as all the usual bangers, fans in attendance were lucky enough to witness several live debuts: last year's Hunter's Moon was played live for the first time, as was their cover of Metallica's Enter Sandman (via setlist.fm). But most interesting of all was the fact that Papa and co. actually launched the entire set with new Impera track Kaisarion (watch a video of that below), while omitting recently-released single Call Me Little Sunshine.

Ghost are the Kerrang! Cover Story stars this week, with Tobias Forge diving deep into all things Impera. In the exclusive interview, he details the background behind Kaisarion, explaining: “There was a building called Caesareum in ancient Alexandria. Roughly what happened was that the teacher and philosopher, Hypatia, was murdered by Christians. She was molested and murdered inside the building, because of her pagan beliefs, because she was a believer in science and real things. This was in the beginning stages of Christianity, when it was just an insane cult, before it got the mandate of a book put together by Romans in 325 to harness that shit. This was like an underground group of terrorists, basically, who couldn't stand to see some female smartass preaching or telling people that the world wasn't flat. And it didn’t happen at the same time, but they also burned down the big library in Alexandria, which must have been an enormous, enormous loss for mankind in terms of knowledge and historic accounts. There you go – for the greater good.

“I think that’s a nice symbol for what you can see now,” he continued. “You can see likenesses of it in public book burnings and stoning and killing everything that doesn't match with a sort of a flat Earth reality that some people live in. Or storming the Capitol and wanting to hang people. It's a symbol for those sorts of movements that are always targeting smartness and enlightenment, and thinking.”

Watch Ghost perform Kaisarion below:

Catch Ghost, Volbeat and Twin Temple live at the following:

January

27 Seattle, WA – Climate Pledge Arena
28 Nampa, ID – Ford Idaho Center Arena
29 Portland, OR – Veterans Memorial Coliseum
31 West Valley City, UT – Maverik Center

February

2 Denver, CO – Ball Arena
4 Lincoln, NE – Pinnacle Bank Arena
5 Minneapolis, MN – Target Center
7 Columbus, OH – Nationwide Arena
8 Hershey, PA – GIANT Center
10 Newark, NJ – Prudential Center
11 Worcester, MA – DCU Center
12 Camden, NJ – BB&T Pavilion
14 Pittsburgh, PA – Petersen Events Center
15 Toledo, OH – Huntington Center
16 Grand Rapids, MI – Van Andel Arena
18 Chicago, IL – Allstate Arena
19 Cincinnati, OH – Heritage Bank Center
20 Milwaukee, WI – Fiserv Forum
21 St. Louis, MO – Chaifetz Arena
23 Independence, MO – Cable Dahmer Arena
25 Houston, TX – Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land
26 Dallas, TX – Fair Park Coliseum
28 El Paso, TX – Don Haskins Center

March

1 Phoenix, AZ – Footprint Center
3 Anaheim, CA – Honda Center

Impera will be released on March 11 via Loma Vista Recordings.