Released: April 25, 2025
Ghost have built an arena-sized world from masks, invented clergy, and hooks meant to reach the back wall. On Skeletá, Tobias Forge points that machinery at subjects that are harder to hide behind: self-deception, grief, regret, desire, and death. That creates the album’s real question: can Ghost write honestly about private fear without making the music smaller?
“Peacefield” begins with a children’s choir suspended in open space. When the band enters, the drums settle into a broad backbeat while layered guitars climb toward the chorus. Forge starts the album by letting other voices state the hope he will spend the next nine songs testing. Ghost have opened records with grand gestures before, but the choir has a clear purpose here. It makes reassurance sound communal before the darker thoughts begin creeping in.
“Lachryma” puts that reassurance under strain. Its main riff marches with a slow, ugly swagger while horror-film keyboards hang around the edges. The verses leave space between the guitar strikes, then the chorus opens through stacked vocals and brighter chords. Forge uses a vampire as the image of someone feeding on another person’s pain. The old Ghost vocabulary now describes a recognizable human problem: staying emotionally tied to someone who has already taken too much.
That move continues through “Satanized,” where demonic possession becomes a description of falling in love and losing control. Bass and drums hold a firm pulse beneath the verses while short guitar figures and keyboards answer Forge’s vocal. The chorus multiplies his voice until one person’s confusion sounds like a congregation. Even the confession has to fill an arena.
The rhythm section keeps all that scale from becoming cluttered. “Cenotaph” moves on a galloping beat while Forge addresses someone who has died but remains present in memory. The music continues moving because the person left behind has to do the same. “Guiding Lights” clears more space with clean guitar and the deliberate pacing of a hard-rock ballad. Its subject is painfully ordinary: watching a friend make a mistake and staying quiet because speaking may end the relationship. The wide chorus gives that private hesitation somewhere to go.
Forge breaks the tension with the blunt hair-metal stomp of “Missilia Amori.” Love becomes missile fire, and the sexual wordplay restores some of Ghost’s familiar raised-eyebrow humour. It also keeps the emotional writing from turning overly solemn. Skeletá may be looking inward, but Forge still knows when the room needs a dirty joke.
“Umbra” makes the strongest musical case for keeping the spectacle. Cowbell cuts through a hazy synthesizer opening before the band locks into a muscular groove. Later, Fredrik Åkesson’s guitar and Salem Al Fakir’s keyboards exchange lines across an extended instrumental passage, with Max Grahn’s drums and Forge’s bass holding the centre. The rhythm stays simple while the soloists become increasingly animated. Desire is communicated through the playing before the lyric has to explain it.
Andy Wallace and Dan Malsch keep the mix wide and orderly throughout. The guitars, synthesizers, and layered vocals remain distinct even when every available space appears occupied. “Lachryma” retains the grime around its main riff, the choir on “Peacefield” stays separate from the band, and the instrumental break in “Umbra” never collapses into noise. The polish supports the arrangements instead of sanding away their character.
“Excelsis” ends the record in a swaying triple-time rhythm and addresses mortality with unusual directness. Everyone leaves eventually. Grief hurts because the connection remains after the person is gone. The arrangement grows around that blunt idea, bringing the album back to the promise of “Peacefield” with a clearer understanding of what hope has to survive.
So, can Ghost turn inward without becoming smaller? Yes. The choirs, layered vocals, and huge choruses now frame grief, attraction, regret, and the certainty of death. Their scale gives Forge enough room to admit those things in the only language Ghost have ever trusted: a public ceremony. Skeletá keeps the mask on and lets us hear the person breathing inside it.
Written by Rob Joncas for DeadNoteMedia.
Artist information and music courtesy of the band.
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