Hail Ghost! Hail Tobias Forge! Hail Skeletá!
The prospect of eternal damnation has never sounded so enticing, infectious or fun as it did on the night of Monday, July 21 when Ghost played to a nearly sold-out crowd of 13,200-plus at the TD Garden.
For a band that on paper would sound like they would only have a ghost of a chance to catch on, Ghost has certainly done just that.
Rising from the pit of pop music hell and now perched high on the upper epsilon of arena rock, the chart-topping, Grammy-winning Swedish rock band has been steadily taking the U.S. by storm for the last 12 years with its over-the-top theatrics, blasphemous satanic imagery and, most importantly, great tunes that you can sink your molars into.
For nearly two hours Monday, Ghost’s frontman and manic mastermind Tobias Forge proved that he’s a combination consummate showman, cheeky entertainer and quick-change artist who can actually sing, deliver a hook-laden melody and playfully offer arena-rock clichés with the best of them.
‘An outrageous scream’
In his latest stage guise of Papa V Perpetua, Forge and company delivered a scorching 19 song set and three-song encore that were made up of surefire, fire and brimstone assaults on your senses.
Ghost is an outrageous scream that shouldn’t be taken too seriously when it comes to their song’s blatantly satanic themes and should be seen at all costs of losing your soul because they are as entertaining as hell.
A natural born entertainer, Forge didn’t sell his soul for rock ‘n’ roll; he merely cribbed notes from the KISS, Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper’s collective rock playbook.
And with Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath making its much-ballyhooed, last curtain call, the world needs a band like Ghost now more than ever.
As the tattered black curtain dropped onto the stage floor, Ghost erupted into a pair of killer tracks from the band’s latest album “Skeletá,” which happened to topped the Billboard Album charts upon its release.
Concealing his face with a chrome half-mask that looked like a combination of the T-800 from “The Terminator” and helmet John Cena wears as the “Peacemaker,” Forge had complete command of the stage with the hellish, hook-laden opus “Peacefield” and the readymade arena rock anthem “Lachryma.”
Wearing a black blazer, black leather gloves, silky black shirt, black tie, black trousers and, for the first number only, a black top hat, Forge made rockstar poses like he was a Goth-flavored Freddie Mercury.
‘Nameless Ghouls’
Doing Forge’s unholy bidding onstage are a half-dozen “Nameless Ghouls,” consisting of two guitarists, two keyboardists, a bassist and a drummer, all of whom wear virtually identical, face-concealing demon masks topped off with either a top hat or a nun’s habit.
In addition, two arguably sexy and sacrilegious “Ghoulettes” wearing rhinestone skeleton jumpsuits and skeletal bat wings kept things grooving behind Forge.
Despite the “Peacefield” and “Lachryma” being only a few months old, the audience shouted out every word.
As Ghost’s dual guitarists shot off Black Sabbath-worthy guitar riff, the faithful minions of hell-bent, head-banging Ghost fans gathered together like witches at black masses during “Per Aspera ad Inferi.”
With its endless barrage of crunchy guitars and pulverizing drums, it was if Ghost had broken into Satan’s tool chest on “Faith.” Here, the audience was totally enthralled with Forge, especially when he delivered the song’s Samuel L. Jackson-friendly refrain that I couldn’t possibly print a family newspaper.
Playing under the band’s humongous, upside-down cross logo, Forge was hanging in the rafters in full demonic “Papa Emeritus IV” regalia during “Call Me Little Sunshine,” a song that could easily be a romantic pop song if they turned down the high decibels and exorcised the inherent devil references.
Forge came the closest to making a political statement on the Orwellian singalong, “The Future Is a Foreign Land.” Making references to not one but both Kennedy assassinations (which is a bold move to do in Massachusetts), Forge prayed for peace, even though he leaning towards believing that what humanity might needs now more than anything is a deep-cleaning, scorching of the earth.
Ghost mustered up its inner-Metallica for fire-and-brimstone standout, “Cirice.” Donning a faux, sequined-lined biker jacket, Forge gave his harrowing sermon in a cathedral setting complete with illuminated glass-windows with the bookend illustrations of the Adam and Eve being cast out of paradise and one of Devil devouring souls in the dead center.
On the evening’s only forgivable misstep, “Darkness at the Heart of My Love,” Forge sounded like he was channeling Peter Cetera more so than Paul Stanley. If that’s not bad enough, the song even had a cheesy ‘80s guitar solo and the prerequisite audience singing a verse without the singer. Yike! Talk about hell on earth.
On “Satanized,’’ another new one from the latest “Skeletá,” Forge bellyaches about having a demonic possession while warmly serenading Satan like he was a soothing antacid not the antichrist. While the song had its moments, I have a sneaky suspicion that it’s the power of good ol’ commerce, not the antichrist that compels him on this number.
The evening’s biggest and most welcome setlist surprise was a bone-crunching “Prime Mover,” which had the strength to flatten everything in its path.
“Umbra,” the last of four songs from Skeletá, featured Forge swiveling his hips while one of the Ghoulettes clanked out some serious cow bell.
‘Firing on all cylinders’
Ghost was Firing on all cylinders for the pulse-pounding, damnation ditty, “Year Zero,” which was another of the evening’s many standouts. Addressing the unsuspecting flock in full purple pontiff regalia, Forge’s outfit came complete with humongous skeleton hands as shoulder pads and dangling three-dimensional skeleton complete with skeleton tail dragging on the floor. With eyebrow-singeing pyrotechnics, this riveting black Mass numbered ended with the faux stained glass being blown out of the virtual cathedral onstage.
On “He Is,” Forge flung off his papal crown as the stage seemed to be drifting into space. Sounding like a modern-day inspirational hymn, despite its pointed subject-matter, the number depicted Jesus Christ as a slick, modern-day CEO who launches off into the stratosphere like a rocket when the going gets tough. By song’s end, the virtual cathedral that made up the stage crumbled to the ground and was engulfed in a pit of bubbling lava. Donning a silver blazer, Forge delivered the riff-heavy rocker “Rats,” and the crowd ate it up. Catchy and infectious as the bubonic plague, “Rats” is still the best song ever written about the black death. With his stranglehold on the audience, Forge needed little encouragement to get the crowd to sing-along during the fist-pumping chorus.
Forge proved to be the consummate, crowd-pleasing flirt on “Kiss the Go-Goat,” another heavy-duty rocker that, despite its title, has nothing to do with Tom Brady. Showing signs of Rob Zombie envy, Forge talked about how it would take an entire week to violate the personal space of everyone in the audience (adding he didn’t have a week to do so), before sending goodnight kisses to select members of the audience.
In case the heavy metal riffage and menacing vocals weren’t enough to scare the bejesus out of the audience during the industrial-strength, corporate greed ditty “Mummy Dust,” Ghost tried to buy them off with a confident keytar solo and confetti cannons showering the G.A. crowd on the floor with counterfeit, 666-dollar bills.
Bay State support
After an overzealous fan flung a black bra at the stage that landed at the feet of a seemingly stunned Forge, the artist thanked the Bay State crowd for their support over the years, which started with their third show ever played in the United States on January 12, 2012 at The Middle East Downstairs in Cambridge, as well as subsequent gigs at the Orpheum and a previous gig at the TD Garden.
Despite not mentioning playing Feb. 11, 2022 at DCU Center in Worcester (What are we, chopped liver?), Forge’s sentiment sounded sincere. Then again, he also sounded sincere as he began praising the unholy union necessary to give birth to the antichrist on the set-closer “Monstrance Clock.”
Ghost ended the evening with an impressive, three-song encore that featured the blasphemous crowd-pleasers “Mary on a Cross,” “Dance Macabre” and “Square Hammer.”