After six albums of Beelzebub-bothering, Ghost’s melodic metal is more tempting than ever

In a multimedia age, it’s surprising that so many artists still insist that “it’s all about the music”. As if that had ever been true in popular music even before Elvis wiggled his hips. But few rock acts since Slipknot have managed to make their image and attendant mythos such a big part of their appeal as Ghost.

Eight years after their mysterious lineage of masked, satanic antipope frontmen, Papa Emeritus (and his successors Papa Emeritus II, III and IV – the latter initially known as Cardinal Copia; do keep up) was revealed to be masking Tobias Forge (ceremonial mitre hats off for managing to keep it so secret even up to that point), their gloriously theatrical narrative is pulling in more punters than ever. Sixth album Skeletá is led by new figurehead Papa V Perpetua, promising to bewitch still-growing audiences on an impending world tour taking in New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Unlike so many other occult-fixated metal acts, though, Ghost’s music doesn’t seek to make actively terrifying sounds that you could fully imagine blasting from mounted speakers behind Hades’ viscera-encrusted reception desk. It’s melodic music that recalls Europe way more than it does Euronymous. If old Nick really did have a rock band in his service, though, he’d surely rather they lured in willing souls that way than with niche-bound black metal. As such, Ghost do him proud on Skeletá.

Lead single Satanized has given fans a moreish taste of what’s to come, and its tale of seduction by the dark side is unsurprisingly a highlight here. ‘A demonic possession, and it’s slowly tormenting my soul,’ Forge sings, which, after six albums of Beelzebub-bothering, surely can’t be a massive surprise.

Elsewhere, though, the four horses references and air-punching chorus of Marks Of The Evil One will be hard for even god-fearing rockers to resist, and camp humour ups the charm quotient on the equally infectious Missilia Amori as he promises: ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours’ and offers ‘love rockets shot right in between your eyes’.

Similarly, on Umbra, over snarling riffs, a pulsing tempo and squalling licks, Papa V breathlessly envisages: ‘In the shadow of the Nazarene, I put my love in you.’ And with chat-up lines like that, we’re surely putty in the horned one’s hands. So whether or not you take such fantasia seriously, it’s enchanting rock’n’roll that might well tempt you into selling your soul – if only for one night of sweet soft-metal abandon.

Johnny is a regular contributor to Prog and Classic Rock magazines, both online and in print. Johnny is a highly experienced and versatile music writer whose tastes range from prog and hard rock to R’n’B, funk, folk and blues. He has written about music professionally for 30 years, surviving the Britpop wars at the NME in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent and magazines such as Uncut, Record Collector and, of course, Prog and Classic Rock.