Review: Ghost, O2 Academy

Last time Ghost played the Academy, it was a bit of an odd occasion. Most of the audience were present for French metallers Gojira, and didn’t know quite what to make of them. Two years on, everything has changed. Meliora, a strong contender for 2015’s Album of the Year, sent them racing up the Billboard chart, amusingly propelling these masked men onto Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show, and they now play sold-out shows wherever they go. Not bad for a bunch of anonymous Swedes with roots in that nation’s death metal scene. Even the fad-fixated mainstream UK media now feel obliged to take notice, though with trademark laziness few of these hacks have bothered to listen to a note of Ghost’s music before adopting their reflexive sneers. The Independent persists in describing them as a black metal act, even though there’s not the slightest trace of black metal in anything they play. Sure, dear ol’ Beelzebub is the primary lyrical inspiration here, but Ghost’s distinctive brand of catchy melodic prog is openly influenced by everyone from Yes to Kansas and Boston, with the mandatory dash of Sabbath.

First up, fellow Swedes Dead Soul. A duo expanded to a trio for touring purposes, they rock the unusual two guitars/two keyboards/one vocalist format with no bass or drums. Your correspondent is no great fan of programmed sounds and drum machines, but strong songwriting, a distinctive Nick Cave-esque singer and a novel sound that’s best described as Nine Inch Nails with an infusion of swamp blues make them an intriguing proposition. Standouts in a short set included the hypnotic Do Your Job and Home by the Sea (not the Genesis song, but curiously not far removed from it).

Ghost’s quintet of Nameless Ghouls stroll on after their traditional intro tape of Jocelyn Pook’s reversed liturgy Masked Ball (or “that weird, unsettling music from Eyes Wide Shut” to Kubrick/Cruise fans). But the arrival of Papa Emeritus III is greeted with a huge shriek of joy from the packed crowd, as though he’s Justin Bieber rather than everybody’s favourite Satanic anti-Pope in full regalia. The Ghouls’ costume makeover affords them more freedom of movement than they enjoyed with the heavy cloaks they wore last time, making for a more energetic show. But like his two predecessors, vocalist and occasional thurible-swinger Papa is still somewhat constrained, at least initially, by his adorable inverted crucifix-decorated mitre.

His vocals are rather lost in a poor mix during openers Spirit and From the Pinnacle to the Pit. But cloths are removed from ears in the sound department by the time they get to the fabulous, Blue Oyster Cult-esque Ritual. Some will never get past the band’s tongue-in-cheek image, but those who are prepared to listen may be surprised to find plenty of substance beneath the robes and masks, with Keyboard Ghoul adding elaborate goth-proggy textures to all the sublime melodic Lucifer-bothering. He even whips out the dreaded keytar at one point. Road-hardened through months of touring, they’re extraordinarily tight and note-perfect throughout.

Papa leads the audience on a Latin singalong during Per Aspera ad Inferi, which must be something of a first. But it’s not all about blasphemy and sacrilege, he reminds us while introducing Body and Blood, having lost the elaborate headgear: it’s about gastronomy too. A brace of naughty nuns, or ‘Sisters of Satan’, proceed to romp in the pit, with the audience under a stern edict to resist the temptation to grope.

The magnificently eerie, riff-driven Cirice follows, and we all chant along to that “Belial, Behemoth, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Satanas, Lucifer” intro to Year Zero like possessed extras in The Devil Rides Out. Has there ever been a more beautiful song of praise to The Horned One than He Is? I suspect not. With the best will in the world, it’s hard to hum, say, Behemoth’s Alas, Lord is Upon Me while doing the dishes, but Ghost achieve something truly subversive with this irresistible inversion. No doubt intentionally conceived as the mirror of a Christian devotional anthem – and easily repurposed as such with a few lyrical revisions – it’s an obvious hit-in-waiting, given a suitable marketing push.

A Ghostified cover of Rocky Erikson’s acid-fried If You Have Ghosts (“This was not written by Ghost, unfortunately,” laments Papa) wraps things up, before the inevitable encore of Monstrance Clock (“a celebration of the female orgasm, in praise of Satan”), sending everyone out into the December night still singing: “Come together, for Lucifer’s son.” What could be more Christmassy than that?