Ghost – Skeletá

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7.0

• Band:
  Ghost
• Duration: 00:46:52
• Available from: 25/04/2025
• Label:

• Loma Vista Recordings

Streaming not yet available

It is appropriate to say it: a pope died, another is made.
The conclave of the Ghost wheelchair, a beloved or hated band, a little for the party taken and a little for the tastes of each, has finally come to decide that “skeletá” will be led by Pope V perpetual, or a Tobias Forge perhaps a little more introspective and less rude than the previous “impera”.
A pontificate, therefore, that preaches morigeracy, simplicity and obviously lovedated love for the evil and everything that concerns it, covered by the glazed patina to which the Swedish mastermind has now accustomed us for years now, but without perhaps that bombastic aura of the last two study tests. In our opinion, the cover again entrusted to Zbigniew Bielak, now considered a fixable element of the project: a crypt that is not by chance represents a place of rest where Tobias seems to have stopped.
If the previous album represented the peak of a crescendo that united the malignancy of the themes of the band with the Matrix pop rock both eighty and more modern, “skeletá” he immediately disappears the cards on the table with “Peacefield”, which seems to have come out directly from a Jamryney and Def Leppard Jam Session, albeit with that malignant grin that always makes a background to everything.
The choice to release the first three pieces of the album as singles, placing immediately after “Lachryma” and “Satanized”, is as always a bait to heat the spirits, beyond webseries, comics and anything else that always leave a little time they find, compared to music.
What you immediately notice from the beginning is a certain lack of verve that perhaps we would not have expected from the pope and its ghouls, albeit the songs are always interpreted brilliantly like the ballato “guide lights”, almost out of a pop rock disc leathered of darkness, or even in the subsequent “The profundis borealis”, which, even in its sepulchral sympathy, perhaps a little lack of a mordant. “Watchers in The Sky”.
References to Queen and that rock arena that we have learned to know since “Dance Macabre” go ahead undeterred with the subsequent “Cenotaphs” and “Missionia Armori”, where the latter partly recovers a certain vein more decisive, perhaps a little lost in some previous outings: love songs for evil and for the demons that as “the nightmare” of Füssli do not sleep. just serene.
In the midst of this waterfall of sensations from a bizarre hybrid between the “black album”, a vague hint of sulfur and foreigners, stands out “Umbra”: a clear declaration of love for the seventies with a lot of Hammond -style keyboards and an irresistible solo towards the end, which certainly make it the most attractive song of the lot.
To close the journey to this world of skeletons, a bit like in “Resptyle on the spital fields”, the ballad “Excelsis”: an apotheosis of – perhaps – redemption, crossed as always by the sacredness and atmospheres halfway between mass and stadium concert, going to sculpt the plaque on a record that, in our opinion, shows how Tobias Forge has decided to admit to the point of being able to have arrived at the His discography, arresting for the moment what until now seemed like a race towards the summit – or the abyss, that you want to say.
Let's clarify: “Skeletá” is not a bad album, and you can appreciate the effort made by Tobias, who again wanted Salem at Fakir and Vincent pontare to his side for the writing of some pieces including “Satanized”, but … something is missing. There is no magic that had made “prequelle” and “impera” two albums in their own bombastic to the limits almost of the tacky but deliciously evil: it is true that you cannot always live in mega-hit as “Kaisarion”, but there is more than a song from this album that has left us, albeit quite amused, with a vague feeling of a bitter in the mouth.
Far from saying that the flow of – in its own way – brilliant creativity of the band is finished or that we would not like a rapprochement on the 'old' ghost, and surely we are not faced with a band that goes only to stamp the tag, but, in the end, “skeletá” will have the 'usual' effect: making the fans go crazy and angry the detractors, as always, being Tobias Forge.
With all peace (eternal) of all, in the end the important thing is that the refrain of “Satanized” is held in the minds and hearts of the thousands that follow the band passionately. Nothing less, nothing more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGR2M2MBJXU