Swedish hard rock band Ghost‘s first visit to Milwaukee back in 2013 was met with a mixture of rapture and bewilderment by a sparse Turner Hall Ballroom crowd. This was the group’s first headlining tour and most attendees’ first glimpse of a bizarre ongoing experiment: to bring Satanism into the mainstream via a ridiculously catchy, overproduced mixture of doom, prog, and hair metal. Critically acclaimed but still underground, Ghost attracted mostly extreme metalheads who would normally scoff at such music—but, well, Satan. While many fans seemed to be having a religious experience at the 2013 show, there were also plenty of sarcastic shouts of “Hail Satan!” from nonbelievers at the end.
The hype, as it turned out, was real. Less than nine years later, Ghost first headlined Fiserv Forum, where they returned Tuesday night as one of the biggest rock bands on the planet whose members are (presumably) under age 60. Led by frontman and only constant member Papa V Perpetua (a.k.a. Tobias Forge, whose identity only became public due to a legal dispute by former band members in 2017), the masked band comprised otherwise of Nameless Ghouls needed no opening act. It was two hours of unabashed Satanic glam.
The band’s no-phones policy had an immediate impact on the crowd; fans were lively and interactive before the show, and all kinds of group chants and cheers echoed through the Fiserv. The venue was pretty packed for a Tuesday, except for the empty upper decks on the sides. An amazing variety of face-painted skulls peppered the crowd, which seemed to benefit from at least a bit of Juggalo crossover.
The stage was shrouded in tattered black curtains when the band opened with “Peacefield.” A couple minutes in, the curtains fell, revealing Papa (as well as his two guitarists) in feathered top hat and snazzy suit, pure black. The frontman is widely known for performing in full anti-pope regalia; at least the shiny skull mask was on. He took his hat off after the first song and remained bare-headed except the mask for most of the show; that pope hat had to be cumbersome to keep balanced for a whole show back in the day. The seven-piece backing band remained in full costume throughout.
At first, there wasn’t a ton of overt Satanic messaging aside from the huge light rig above the stage in the shape of an upside-down cross. The setlist was culled largely from 2015’s Meliora album and Skeletá, the Billboard chart-topping record Ghost released at the end of April. Only one song from their debut made the cut, but somewhat surprisingly, selections from their second album, Infestissumam, provided the most riveting highlights of the night. Early on, “Per Aspera Ad Inferi” showcased the full potency of Ghost’s anthemic songwriting as well as how much heavier the live attack comes across than their albums do. That went double later on with “Year Zero,” which featured Forge in full purple papal garb front-and-center for the only time during the show, as well as flames shooting up from the stage and explosions at the end.
Forge ran backstage after nearly every song for a wardrobe alteration; the only other time we saw him in a pope costume was for “Call Me Little Sunshine,” during which he seemingly levitated up from behind the drum riser and hovered as he sang. Next was a brief bit of banter leading into “The Future Is A Foreign Land”; the lines “I know it sounds insane / The dark fascist regime might be gone” got loud screams from the crowd, which was refreshingly diverse gender-wise compared to the majority of metal concerts. There are indeed positive ideas in Ghost’s music, even if you don’t happen to worship the devil: “Mummy Dust” was augmented by a grotesque and effective anti-capitalist animation, and the various messages of togetherness and love needn’t be taken as some devious lure into a cult, but rather genuine expressions, echoed by the young-leaning crowd. The rest was just theater.
To parents who may be concerned about the dangers of Satanism: have you ever heard or read rock and roll lyrics? If you were at, say, a Foreigner concert hearing Ghost’s “Dance Macabre,” you might be legitimately concerned that Lou Gramm wanted to have sex with your daughter. Relax! It’s about the black plague. Compared to what rock stars were up to during your glory days, this is harmless fun, and these fans ate it up. The funny thing is, that song is Foreigner-esque; most of these songs conjured up ’80s rock, particularly that glossy era of Yes and the late great Ozzy Osbourne, whose spirit was probably not far from many attendees’ minds. (One of the Ghouls may have been teasing Black Sabbath’s “Hole In The Sky” during “Satanized,” but that riff is pretty similar as it is.)
As retro as Ghost’s sound may be, their target audience is young folks, for whom genre distinctions are less and less meaningful; they’re probably not debating much about whether music this cheesy can still be considered metal. However, set-closer “Monstrance Clock” may have been some older attendees’ moment of “what did we actually walk into here?”: hundreds of teens chanting “Come together / Together as one / Come together / For Lucifer’s son” while demonic sexual art played out on the screen behind the band, not necessarily a wholesome scene for all eyes. Surely even the internet holds nothing so offensive.
It’s also worth mentioning that before this song, Forge dedicated the show to Jeffrey Fortune, a fan who tragically died of heart failure at the Milwaukee Ghost show back in 2018. Ghost set up a GoFundMe at the time which quickly exceeded its goal in helping his family, some of whom were there in the front row for Tuesday’s show. Forge had also led the crowd in “Jesus” chants just prior to this. Maybe it’s all part of the same myth.
Want more Milwaukee Record? Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter and/or support us on Patreon.