In April 1988, Scorpions released Savage Amusement, the long-awaited follow-up to 1984’s Love at First Sting, which had catapulted the German band to global superstardom. While the new record played to the band’s strengths, something felt a little off. The razor-sharp heavy metal tone and kinky Helmut Newton cover art of Love at First Sting had been replaced by a smoother, softer tone, both aurally and visually.
It was still Scorpions, but with rounded, plush edges, playing more to the pop and adult contemporary crowd than the teenagers who were drawn to the searing heavy metal of “Rock You Like a Hurricane”, and both critics and fans caught on quickly. The album played to several of the band’s strengths, but not all. Consequently, it didn’t take long for album sales to stagnate.
Skeletá, the sixth album by stylish Swedish Satanists Ghost, finds the band in a similar position. With their previous three albums – 2015’s Meliora, 2018’s Prequelle, 2022’s Impera – singer/songwriter/visionary Tobias Forge had been steering Ghost into a decidedly more pop-oriented direction with each subsequent release. Working alongside several crack Scandipop geniuses, Forge honed his skills, combining his superior knowledge of classic 1970s and 1980s metal and hard rock with the melodic nuance and explosive choruses of pop music.
Looking back at the Ghost’s biggest hits of the last decade – “Cirice”, “Square Hammer”, “Rats”, “Dance Macabre”, “Mary on a Cross”, “Call Me Little Sunshine”, “Spillways” – Forge has established himself as deft a hard rock songwriter as the great Desmond Child. The songs are beautifully crafted, loaded with smart 1980s metal reference points, and contrasting the dark musical and lyrical themes with vocal melodies that stay in listeners’ heads long after the first listen. No matter how sleek the arrangement, it was still quintessential Ghost: campy, deliciously nightmarish, extremely catchy, and most importantly, fun.
What sets Skeletá apart from the last three records, however, is its slightly muted tone. The 1980s metal riffs remain ever-present, but a considerable amount of restraint is evident, whether minimized in the mix to favor a more spartan sound or performed with a little less force than in the past.
The album’s darkest song, the swinging lead single “Satanized”, is as heavy as Skeletá gets, a hint of menace lurking underneath Forge’s irresistible vocal hooks. That dynamic push-and-pull between light and dark, nightmarish and romantic, guitar-driven and vocal-driven has been key to Ghost’s success over the past decade; however, the deeper cuts on the album feel awash in melancholy rather than camp.
There are moments where the tactic works beautifully. “Lachryma” is a marvel of hard rock songwriting. Opening with a chiming, arpeggiated riff that echoes the more adventurous side of ABBA‘s album deep cuts, it shifts into the kind of churning groove fans have come to expect from Ghost, only to ease into a sublime, high-gloss glam metal chorus that any Hollywood band in 1987 would have killed for.
It’s the kind of rock chorus that doesn’t so much explode as shimmer, often resembling Jeff Paris’ 1987 song “Cryin'” (Vixen’s 1988 cover would become a minor hit for the glamsters) without coming too close to a rip-off. The chiming synths will immediately remind Gen-Xers of listening to Heart’s Bad Animals on cassette, or anything Ron Nevison produced in the 1980s, frankly. Granted, the lyrics toss in a few vampiric references, but this is a straight-up love song, and a very good one at that.
“De Profundis Borealis” is another strong progressive rock flex by Forge, a four-and-a-half-minute suite whose cadence and lead guitar echoes Iron Maiden circa Somewhere in Time. “Cenotaph” is a surreal, uptempo number reminiscent of the Blue Öyster Cult’s polished and chaotic 1988 album Imaginos.
“Marks of the Evil One” is a lively, slightly gothic little track about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Meanwhile, “Missilia Amori” is the corniest stunt Forge has committed to record to date, an Animal Magnetism-style strip club anthem with the requisite stomping beat, in-the-pocket bassline, reverse snare, and lyrics about shooting love rockets between a partner’s eyes. Forge doesn’t hide his intent of creating a tasty slice of sleaze metal straight out of the late 1980s. As a writer who has spent an inordinate amount of time dissecting the musical intricacies of glam metal for the past 42 years, this unapologetically blunt song perfects what it sets out to do.
Appearing late in the album, “Umbra” is the best track on Skeletá, artfully combining a lavish synth intro straight out of Rick Wakeman’s bag of tricks, Forge’s simultaneously devilish and horny lyrics, some fun cowbell, a wild lead guitar/synth call-and-response middle section, and rhythm guitar riffs that hearken back to the latter days of glam metal. For these five and a half minutes, Forge and producer Gene Walker capture the precarious balance between heavy metal, hard rock, prog, goth, and pop that Ghost excels at.
The same can’t be said for “Guiding Lights” and “Excelsis”, which sleepwalk through power ballad tropes and ultimately lack the emotional resonance of such classics as “He Is” and “Darkness at the Heart of My Love”. They’re decent, they’re there, they fill a spot on the tracklist, but ultimately feel more like B-sides to better singles that haven’t been written yet.
The hard rock landscape is littered with albums that feel as though their energetic creators sound tired: Mirrors, Rock in a Hard Place, OU812, Theatre of Pain, 7800° Fahrenheit, and Savage Amusement. Whether or not Forge was exhausted at the end of the promo cycle for last year’s concert film Rite Here, Rite Now is anyone’s guess, but as strong as much of Skeletá is, Ghost’s usual contagious energy feels depleted. Its more measured approach does lend an appealing atmosphere of sadness that looms over the entire record, but fans will be clamoring for more energy and menace amidst the garishness next time around.