By AJ Whited
The band Ghost, known for their tongue-in-cheek performances and campy lyrics professing love for the disgusting and profane, released their sixth studio album “Skeletá” on April 25, 2025, to mixed reviews. Here’s why.
Since the release of “Opus Eponymous” in 2010 and right up to the release of “IMPERA” in 2022, Ghost maintained a fairly consistent album structure, even if the image of the band had changed significantly. Instrumental tracks played massive roles in the atmosphere and feeling of each album, becoming fan favorites and tying themes together. Gone are the days of dank pub shows with communion wine, replaced by sold-out football stadiums and world tours, but the instrumental track held its own, making each album a story on its own.
Ghost mastermind Tobias Forge wove a huge story from Opus to IMPERA. A story of family, deceit, love, lust, forgiveness, power and even incorporated real life issues into the tapestry of the story. Through the music and YouTube videos called “Chapters”, fans came to expect a certain amount of effort and thought put into the characters and music. Everything came together. Fan theories ran wild in online circles, people debated and combed through every Chapter, every music video, every song for clues and hints for what was coming next.
Then came Skeletá. What a disappointment this album is. To be certain, the music quality has not necessarily gone down. The production is good, the studio artists play impressively. The issue is the story, or lack thereof.
To begin, Skeletá has no instrumental tracks. No instrumental intro track, which was a staple of almost every single album that comes before, except for “Meliora”, which also received mixed reviews upon release. However, Meliora does include two instrumental tracks, just not an introductory track. As I stated before, these do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of atmosphere and storytelling. They are part of what makes Ghost different from other rock bands. It’s not supposed to be just about music, it’s supposed to be about the story, too.
Second, Skeletá leans too far into 80s cliches and nostalgia baiting. The songs are uninspired. Everything on Skeletá you have heard before. Ghost has always been big in campy 80s circles from the beginning. The use of organs and synthesizers, keytars, even cowbells always drew that crowd, but Skeletá relies on it far too much. Combined with a lack of unique instrumental tracks, it falls flat. It’s uninteresting.
Third, Forge has lost the plot. The story is completely opaque at this point. Skeletá was supposed to follow IMPERA as a rise-and-fall dynamic. IMPERA is about empires, opulence, greed, insatiable desires, and Skeletá is supposed to be about the fall. The death, the decay, the rotting of the empire from the inside. To put it simply, it is not. The lyrics to the songs do not relate to that theme in any way. The songs all start and end abruptly instead of fading into each other, a massive red flag in terms of the storytelling. Every song on this album was created independently of each other with no regard for the overarching theme or anything. “Missilia Amori”, one of the songs I like the most from this album, is a tried-and-true Ghost classic of tongue-in-cheek sexual references, which could be enjoyable if the rest of the album was on theme, but it is not. If it was possible to plagiarize yourself, I would say Ghost did it with this track. Songs like “Monstrance Clock”, “Kiss The Go-Goat”, even the TikTok viral “Mary On A Cross” did this already, and did so in much more interesting fashion. It’s tired, it’s done, and it’s smothered in so much 80s camp it gives me a headache.
Finally, the character of Papa V Perpetua is non-existent. The rise and fall of Cardinal Copia from an unknown young buck to head of a world-famous rock band, reduced to an intern in the fictional Ghost Ministry was amusing and moving. I loved watching his evolution. The use of YouTube videos to tell a side story for those invested in Forge’s world and characters was, in my opinion, genius. It made me and so many others care. Now the replacement for the Cardinal in question has no personality. We know nothing about him. He was another surprise character introduced with the release of the album with no tease, no backstory. It feels rushed and, again, uninspired.
In the end, I believe Forge set himself up for the failure of Skeletá by setting expectations with previous work. Skeletá feels half-baked. It feels like he wanted to release some music without having to adhere to the Ghost framework, and it shows. As a Ghost fan, I was incredibly disappointed. I am not old enough to have this much appreciation for 80s cliches. I am here for a compelling story told with catchy hard rock music and goofy costumes, not a pile of cutting room floor songs with no relation to what Ghost is or is supposed to be.
Skeletá is not the worst. I still listen to it. I can enjoy it completely separated from what it is supposed to be, but when I listen, I don’t hear Ghost.
At this point, I have no idea what is next for this band I used to love. I would not be surprised if they don’t release any more music. A sad conclusion it would be, but maybe for the best if this is what Forge is okay with.