25.08.2019 Ghost

Maimarktgelände at Mannheim (Germany)

After Bokassa it was up to the Swedish metal project Ghost to enthuse the crowd even more. Singer Tobias Forge who is on stage currently as cardinal Coppia brought his nameless ghouls with him to celebrate his Mass within the scope of their “A Pale Tour Named Death” tour.
Forge was extremely standing out optically with his red suit whereas his fellow musicians were dressed completely in black hiding their faces behind silver masks. At these temperatures I highly have to pay tribute to them as with their stage outfits all of them have to have extremely been sweating. The scenery on stage changed slightly after the break for making rearrangements and large elements looking like church windows were dominating the stage. It was opened with “Ashes” of their 2018 released album “Prequelle”. Meanwhile, more people were there leading to a better and louder atmosphere. Ghost was permanently celebrated of the crowd. Experienced, they played from song to song of their set only interrupted a few times of short speeches of Forget to the audience.
Mainly material of the current long player “Prequelle” nicely mixed with the predecessor “Meliora” out of the year 2016 and studded with single songs of the albums “Infestissumam”, “Opus Eponymus” and the EP “Popestar”. Especially loud it got during their most successful song of their career “Cirice” that was sung along by nearly all people within the crowd. A nice gimmick was additionally the appearance of Papa Nihil that, surrounded by two huge bodyguards, played a really great saxophone solo during the song “Miasma”.
For me, Ghost is too much pop, nevertheless they were able to convince me that afternoon very much, more than they did some years ago as support act for In Flames. From music point of view, it was perfect and also the whole show was quite impressive. Although you were not able to see the faces due to their masquerade all musicians clearly were able to show how much fun this gig was to them despite the extreme heat. Ghost is slowly but unstoppable on their way to be one of the big players in metal. This was clearly shown by their headliner show on Wacken 2018. From this project there will be more good stuff to come during the next years and who likes moderate metal music combined with a good show will for sure not be disappointed at Ghost.