Once upon a time, in another life, I remember vividly hearing the professional wrestler Terry Taylor recount his experience having a sixty-minute match with the legendary Ric Flair. Whatever your thoughts on the profession, the rigorous toll the performance takes on the participants is legendary. As memory recounts, Taylor explained how after fifty-five grueling minutes, Ric Flair leaned in to him and whispered, “Okay, here’s where we earn our money,” signaling to Taylor it was time to draw the match to a close in a big finish. That story has been etched into memory as something of a lesson. That at the pits of the greatest fatigue, when all seems lost, finding the strength to go on precisely at that moment, is what makes for real heroism. When every inch of your body wants to give out, when your very verve and inertia seems long lost. That one extra breath, that one further hour, that insistence on doing the job right even when your every instinct otherwise is to say “screw it,” is the stuff of champions. Carving that determination from the complete bottom of failure and total destruction is one of the more impressive aspects of the human condition.

Upon approach the almost laughably gigantic Intuit Dome cuts a daunting shape. Like the most awe-inspiring of Las Vegas casinos, it looks like an abomination grown from the ground rather than a man-made construct. Huddling with a small group of photographers waiting for the three-song portion where photography could be done, talk quickly turns to this tour, entitled Skeletour for the band’s most recent album Skeletá, perhaps being the last for a while. That the band’s impresario, lead singer and primary character player Tobias Forge may wish for time away and may abstain from touring with his now genre-defining, mega successful band. Is it true? Lord only knows. Ghost and Forge have always been selective about press, and for a band steeped in character-based imagery, simple stories quickly evolve into trumped up fiction. What is true, is this evening’s show completes a long trek of near 75 concerts done over the last 10 months. And in true Ghost fashion, their Los Angeles stop has become each time another in a growing series of seminal moments in the band’s rising career. Their last album cycle behind the pitch-perfect Impera in 2022 found the band ending their tour in 2023 in the same fashion, then playing the biggest show of their career headlining the Kia Forum. We covered that show as well and it came off as a coronation of a new king of heavy metal (the show also doubled as a concert film they released entitled Rite Here Right Now).

Forge, in his current bandleader persona Papa V Perpetua, made a nod to the career defining significance of these shows indicating late in this evening how their first time in Los Angeles was playing the legendary Sunset Strip venue The Roxy. The show tonight was a triumphant display, catapulted by the crescendo nature of the chosen setlist. The show ramped through the recent singles “Peacefield,” “Lachryma” and “Satanized” with a pitch-perfect curation of songs across their entire catalog. The only major omission from the selection was Prequelle closer “Life Eternal,” and sadly, only one song from the stacked Impera “Darkness at the Heart of My Love” was played. Barring those tiny complaints though, it was all aces mounting in energy as the show ramped through to a powerful conclusion.

“Spirit” and “From The Pinnacle to the Pit” from the band’s landmark release Meliora were played early ratcheting up the velocity, the former with its dueling Iron Maiden-esque guitars and the latter with its song-cementing bassline. Diehard fans will know that “Majesty” is one of the very strongest Meliora cuts, an ominous, upbeat and patient sermon on the power of tension and release in songcraft. Fans were lucky enough to hear that, “Cirice” and “Devil Church” amidst the Meliora selections on the evening. Ghost even went all the way back to their first album Opus Eponymous with the inclusion of “Satan Prayer.”

Things really started to pick up speed from the halfway point of the set. Fans have already latched on to the incredible bridge in Skeletá album track “Umbra” and just watching this giant audience feast on the manic interplay by the band’s guitarist, keyboardist and drummer was a wild thing to see firsthand. Not even a single, and already a bona fide hit to the fans. “Year Zero” brought the crowd participation to a fever pitch behind its unforgettable chorus, “Hell Satan / Archangelo / Hell Satan / welcome Year Zero.” Things dialed down to peaceful for “He Is” and “Rats” followed becoming another powerhouse singalong on the song’s histrionic refrain “Wow-oh-wow-ohhh.” The set proper concluded on the one-two punch of their epic, mounting “Mummy Dust” and early fan favorite, “Monstrance Clock.” For many years the band would end their set right there on “Monstrance Clock” letting the triggered chorus of “Come together / together as one / Come together / for Lucifer’s son,” bring the night to a close. In all honesty, most hard rock bands could only dream of crafting a song as powerful and rewarding as “Mummy Dust” with its cathartic melodic reprise in the final thirty seconds, but things, somehow impossibly ramped even better from there.

After the encore break the band returned to end the set the only logical way it could, performing their three biggest hits. Surprise Tik Tok smash “Mary On a Cross” started the finale, the playful ’60s inspired tune (and humorously presented as if it was created by Papa’s father in that decade) allowed the muscular guitars to take a back seat to the keyboards and Forge’s lyrical finesse. Forge invited the crowd to dance, and fist-banging mania ensued as the killer riff for “Dance Macabre” rang out. The capacity crowd sang along nearly word for word on this one. The group’s long-running guitarist Per Eriksson draped his arm around Forge as the last chords were let ring out endlessly. Forge made one of his few societal focused comments at this moment, indicating how badass a guitarist Eriksson was, and how he was about to kick the crowd’s ass so hard, it would kick them into tomorrow. He offered at this point, “There, it will be better. Tomorrow will be better. Things will get better.” For a night brimming over with heaping helpings of positive energy, it’s easy to forget that our world has devolved into heartbreaking chaos. Autocratic wannabes tamper and wreck any semblance of peace. Violence has broken out in numerous corners of the globe. A new era of oligarchs has arisen that would put America’s former villains at large, The Robber Barons, to shame. And all the while, the rise of the most soulless technology ever, artificial intelligence, is dismantling jobs that millions depend on, without any semblance of a plan from our leaders on how to replace the jobs lost. Rest on that sentiment for a moment: tomorrow will be better. Things will get better.

Sometimes a heartbeat ticks by in what feels like ethereal hours, even though it’s only a fraction of a second. Snap. The opening guitar lick of “Square Hammer” kicks in accompanied by the staccato drumline. The Intuit Dome rips open to a frenzied roar and the entire audience is furious with enraptured glee. There are so many songs that a band as strong as Ghost could play in a set like this, but once you get to this moment, it is impossible to conceive of any other way the show could end. And everywhere you look, for just a moment, people forgot all about the real-life horrors of our world. An inescapable clusterfuck, dumpster fire of anxiety inducing nonsense was gone, if even for just a moment.

Could this epic show be the final ritual? The band has long somewhat tongue-in-cheekily referred to their shows as rituals. But could this be it? Other giants of music have reached the top of the mountain, only to find the sacrifice not worth it and powerfully stepped back for good and all. Andre 3000 has done only reunion tour with OutKast since their era defining masterpiece Speakerboxxx/The Love Below and when the genius Bill Withers hung up his hat, he did so once and for all. But there’s a bigger question to pose here. One that is as uncomfortable as it is unfair to Forge for all he has created and given to the world. Can we afford to not have a ritual such as this in such troubled times? The Yondr pouch holding of cell phones is a logistical frustration—and perhaps a slight danger if a true emergency arose—but the positive impact of that forced sacrifice is that everyone is focused entirely on the moment and the energy everyone around them is exhibiting. Everyone present is glued to the moment. Not in their thoughts or their performative peacocking. It’s just this moment, right here, right now.

And never more important is that fact. Beyond the Satanic imagery and Scott McCloud-esque abstraction of the band’s characters that allows fans to pour their own meaning into the presentation, what really was evident to anyone present was how this was an atmosphere of joy. Pure, unbridled joy. A giant crowd of people, vastly different than the banality of the status quo, all singing proudly in unison. While not assuming anything about anyone’s faith, it’s a pretty good bet, the excitement here is how pure this art resonates with people that live outside the norms of common society. And let’s be real about their impact. The world in total disarray, it is the freaks, the weirdos, the bangers, the art geeks, the cosplayers, the nerds, the enthusiasts, the actors, the performers, the writers, the musicians, the real fucking people who will put this world back together again. While selfish people feast in avarice while good people suffer, it will be those artists and brilliant thinkers who brick by brick will build the world back to the light. We are everywhere. And that unison, that unity, the joy in what makes life worth living is what inspires all of us to harness these innovations to the bring the best out of our species. To paraphrase Forge here, nothing may last forever, but our imprint on the human race does. So can we afford to lose a real champion? Can we risk not having our own ritual to celebrate the real bounty of life together? To champion the decency, focus and joy in what the real breath of creation brings? I’m not sure if we can afford to. Hopefully, we never have to know.

Setlist
Peacefield
Lachryma
Spirit
From the Pinnacle to the Pit
Majesty
The Future Is a Foreign Land
Devil Church
Cirice
Darkness at the Heart of My Love
Satanized
Satan Prayer
Umbra
Year Zero
He Is
Rats
Kiss the Go-Goat
Mummy Dust
Monstrance Clock

Encore:
Mary on a Cross
Dance Macabre
Square Hammer

All photos by Raymond Flotat