Ghost’s Skeletá is one of the most anticipated metal albums of the year – and rightfully so. Once underground darlings of doom metal, Tobias Forge’s devil church have transformed into an arena-filling juggernaut, and their sixth full-length is guaranteed to contain plenty of anthems with seductive melodies.
But, if the wait until April 25 is (understandably) feeling a bit much, worry not! Metal Hammer recently sat down with Forge and got him to give us a track-by-track guide to Ghost’s next outing. He gets even more in-depth in a video interview we filmed with him as well, which you can watch below.
For more Ghostly goodness, pick up the new issue of Metal Hammer, where the band’s mysterious ‘new’ frontman Papa V Perpetua and his redesigned ghouls grace the cover. You can pre-order it with an exclusive cover and a vinyl variant of Skeletá unavailable in the shops via the Louder webstore.
1.) Peacefield
Building from a moving children’s choir intro into a histrionic, heart-bursting shot of 80s rock’n’roll theatre, it’s the kind of epic album opener that now seems to be par for the course for Ghost.
Tobias: “Because the record is going to slalom into darker subjects, I wanted to set a tone of hope in the beginning. I wanted to add a hand to the listener: ‘It will all be fine, but we’re gonna go sideways now and go on a little trip.’”
2.) Lachryma
Throwing us straight back into classic Ghost territory with a heavy, marching riff, Lachryma reads like an aborted Nosferatu screenplay, wrapped in Sabbathian doom metal and glorious AOR cheese.
Tobias: “It opens with more of a riffage, and I guess now comes off as somewhat of a ‘typical’ Ghost mash-up, where it’s heavy on one end and met with a big, bombastic chorus. That’s a song about self-deceit.”
3.) Satanized
With such a merrily nefarious chorus that digs into your cranium with all the subtlety of a David Cronenberg horror, it’s no real surprise that this was plucked as the album’s first single, and the world’s introduction to Papa V.
Tobias: “Satanized is a song about love – not being possessed by a demon, but the idea of coming off as being possessed by a demon because you’re in love. So it felt like that was going to suit the record really well.”
4.) Guiding Lights
Get your phone lights out! The album’s first big power ballad is dropped in early, and it”s a corker. That ‘The road that leads to nowhere is long’ hook is surely destined to be belted back at Papa et al in arenas soon.
Tobias: “Guiding Lights is the more traditional hard rock ballad of the record. It’s [about] the non-ability to be able to speak to someone you know is going in the wrong direction. You don’t dare say it: ‘If I say this, we will not even be friends anymore.’”
5.) De Profundis Borealis
A dose of searing heavy metal urgency after that side-step into schmaltz, this is another massive modern Ghost earworm, but dig in a bit and there is certainly some of the Opus Eponymous-era DNA still lurking.
Tobias: “Oscar Wilde wrote a letter called De Profundis. That means ‘from the abyss’. Borealis means ‘northern’, so for all you black metal fans, it’s one of the most Immortal-esque titles, because it means ‘from the northern abyss’!”
6.) Cenotaph
A galloping burst of rock’n’roll drama, Cenotaph packs one of Skeletá’s most profound emotional punches, as it digs into the impact of the death of a loved one.
Tobias: “A cenotaph is a stone structure posing as a grave, but does not actually have a body inside. I thought that served as nice symbolism for the idea that someone dying isn’t necessarily embodied by this buried physical entity inside a grave, but is a part of our consciousness.”
7.) Missilia Amori
Look, there’s a lot of deep stuff on Skeletá, but sometimes you just need a song that sounds like classic Kiss and packs lyrics about shooting love rockets into your face.
Tobias: “A lot of hard rock in the 80s was basically songs that were stripped to! When love has started to appear as hate and disguises that as love, it can be extremely unpleasant.”
8.) Marks Of The Evil One
A chuggy 80s rock anthem with another humdinger of a chorus, this is classic Ghost territory: skyscraper hooks mashed up with devilishly evil lyrics. But who is the Evil One here?
Tobias: “I think it’s more interesting focusing on who the marks are. Lyrically, it’s a very dummified interpretation of Biblical writing, sort of simplified as something cool!”
9.) Umbra
‘In the shadow of the Nazarene / I put my love in you.’ Oh god, Papa’s sounding horny with his lyrics again! We defy anyone to hear the cowbell smacking away on this one and not get a little hot under the collar, though.
Tobias: “The message is, basically, all you need is love! I felt there needed to be one coital song on the record, because at the end of the day, that’s one of the main driving forces that we all have.”
10.) Excelsis
How on earth do you finish an album this bombastic? Why, with a big, swaying, waltzy ballad of course! Sonically, Excelsis is a spiritual sister track to fellow Ghost album-enders Life Eternal (Prequelle) and Respite On The Spitalfields (Impera).
Tobias: “The overall messaging, even though it’s very death-heavy, is simply that if you are listening to this, you are alive, and you should live life as effectively as possible, because death is inevitable.”
Get the new issue of Metal Hammer in a world-exclusive bundle featuring a vinyl variant of Skeletá and a magazine cover you won’t find in the shops. Order via the Louder webstore.
