Review Summary: This albums tells a very dark story.
I was extremely curious as to the direction the band would go in due to the in-house fighting and legal issues between the frontman now known as ‘Cardinal Copia’ and the ‘Nameless Ghouls’. The Ghouls case being that ‘Papa Emeritus' as he was known at the time was cheating them out of their share of the profits from albums and world-wide tours.
Now I’ll be honest initially I didn’t get Ghost when they first exploded on the scene. The album art suggested they were a death metal outfit with their album art albeit very good and the band logo contrived of an inverted crucifix and various religious symbols. I would have Ghost come up on my playlists and if not in the mood for their particular style of melodic, progressive and occasionally psychedelic rock would skip over it and immediately play my ‘go to’ bands when needing a thrash or death metal fix. It was only until I sat down and spent time with the first album ‘Opus Eponymous' that I truly began to appreciate the theatrical art form that is Ghost. It was also then that I began to understand what the buzz was with this band. In fact, occasionally I feel a sense of nostalgia while listening to Ghost as it often takes me back to when I first heard Deep Purple – In Rock or The War of the Worlds.
With the introduction being Ashes immediately the theme here is the black death with a little girl singing ‘ring a ring o’ roses’ over a haunting melody before a heavy guitar chord kicks in and we are introduced to Rats.
Rats at the time of writing has had a colossal 8.8 million views on YouTube and its easy to see why. It has a great melody and is extremely theatrical in its delivery. This song alone makes me want to go out get tickets to the next Ghost show. It certainly is the most ‘poppy’ of all songs on this album but with an excellent heavy outro it reminds you that this is still very much a Ghost album.
Faith starts with an excellently paced crunching guitar riff and is probably the heaviest track on the album. It also boasts some intensely beautiful vocals with a very evil sounding scream from the Cardinal towards the end of the song with the lyrics ‘faith is mine’ before moving into a devilishly good outro. The whole song is truly a standout moment on this album.
See the Light begins with a church organ and choir before the piano takes you into the main verse with again a catchy frantic chorus that will stick in your mind for a long while. The bridge is very Deep Purple-esque with a slight 80’s undertone.
Miasma is a brilliant instrumental that transports you off to a whole other place with layers of great guitar work, some excellent drumming towards the end of the song which then builds to a saxophone solo to take the song out. The saxophone was not actually something I was expecting from Ghost but it definitely works.
Dance Macabre is the perfect melodic arena rock song; I can see this will be their most played and requested song and will likely be the go-to singalong song at gigs from here on.
Pro Memoria is probably where the album drops off ever so slightly. The lyrics in the chorus, ‘don’t you forget about dying, don’t forget about your friend death' does test my patience slightly. It’s not that I am seeking overly cryptic lyrics here but anything would be less cliché than this even for Ghost. It borders on almost embarrassing as cheap theatrics.
The album gets back on track with Witch Image however again the song suffers lyrically with lines such as ‘someone’s flesh is rotting tonight’ which is can get tedious but overall, it’s a great melodic song and worthy of its place on this album; This one was actually one of my favourites when I first heard the album. It has an upbeat 80’s feel which wouldn’t look out of place on a David Bowie LP.
Helvetesfonster is the second instrumental on the album which is excellent and is almost like a sound score from The Lord of the Rings and I feel would have served as a great song to end the album on rather than 'Life Eternal' which is a very well crafted, dark yet romantic song.
This album in my opinion is their best yet. Meliora was my favourite Ghost album with Opus Eponymous coming in second but this has taken it. I think they have really raised the bar with this album on almost every level, song writing, technically and with the two instrumentals they add to the mystique and brilliance of Prequelle. This album is incredibly polished and very much like the other three albums masterfully produced. It may not be as heavy as the earlier albums although the guitar tones are still rich and vibrant and if you can accept this release for what it is then it’ll be in your collection for a very long time. It’s beautiful, well crafted and often magical in its delivery.
