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This is my favorite song on the new Ghost album, “Skeletá.”

At this point everybody in the business is familiar with the Swedish “metal” band. But the dirty little secret is the music is really not metal. I’m not saying it’s never heavy, but unlike so much of today’s metal it’s not played at light speed with voices shouting on top of what too often resembles noise. I get it, I get it, the listeners want to kick out the jams. They and their bands are the other, their own separate domain, but really a backwater. Most of the songs that you hear on the Active Rock chart don’t require a second listen. There’s emotion, then again it’s almost a caricature of the genre, akin to the hair band power ballads of the late eighties. But Ghost is different.

Ghost is more akin to “Hysteria.” Maybe even Queensrÿche at times. And Genesis?

Ghost is doing everything right when seemingly everybody else is doing it wrong. They want a cult audience. They know that keeping it somewhat precious only embellishes the act’s image. You have to make an effort to be a fan.

Consider the Yondr pouches. The truth is video helps you. The mystery has been history for years. It’s hard to get noticed, any publicity you receive benefits you.

And yes, Yondr pouches mean that the attendees can’t spend the show on their phones, but it also means there’s a blackout as to what happens on stage. And this only works if your music is good. And Ghost’s is.

Speaking of the hair band era… That’s where all the money was, on MTV, which fed the playlists on the new triumphant Top Forty stations on FM radio. You were either on MTV or you were in the wilderness. There was a great divide, and acts would do almost anything to get on the service. Sing ballads unrepresentative of the rest of their oeuvre and hire stylists for their videos and… One day the public woke up and had had enough, they were aware of the construct, it was just too damn phony.

Yes, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana came along in the early nineties to rescue rock, but those songs were hits everywhere, whereas prior to MTV…

There were two verticals, two roads. AM was Top Forty, FM was album rock. And occasionally tracks from FM crossed over to AM, but some of the best FM acts never had an AM hit, yet got a ton of FM airplay.

FM was the alternative. Not like in R.E.M. and the rest of the alternative acts, no…literally an alternative, the OTHER! Where thinking hard core music fans went and listened, prodigiously. You didn’t need a three minute single to triumph, you just needed a great record, genre wasn’t that important, FM rock was a big tent, at least until the corporate rock of the late seventies that killed the genre.

Ghost is not corporate rock.

So all we hear about is the acts in the Spotify Top 50, veritable brands, covered by mainstream media, even though so much of that music is evanescent junk. All the action is elsewhere. Sans the usual hype, just waiting like a land mine to blow up in your personal headspace.

Now one could argue that the Ghost paradigm was first done by Slipknot. But Slipknot’s music was nowhere near as accessible, really not accessible as all.

But really Ghost is a product of Sweden. Where you can stretch out artistically and be embraced, because radio was never open to all comers, you could go down the road less taken and triumph. Never forget that Max Martin started out in hard rock/metal.

To be Ghost is expensive. To make Ghost work you have to be a thinker, to not only execute but continue to push the envelope forward, coming up with new ideas to wow the audience.

Yes, the gimmick was the band on stage was unknowable. And for a long time, that was true. But it also caused listeners to focus on the music, the music came first.

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Tobias Forge, the frontman of Ghost, is 44. And the band was formed in 2006 and their first album came out in 2010. This used to be unheard of. But this is what the internet has wrought, age no longer matters, it’s about the music. Are you willing to hang in there that long to make it?

Then you’d better be original, like Ghost.

Sure, there are plenty of acts out on the road with members who are in their fifties and sixties, never mind forties…but almost all of them are running on fumes, they’re selling tickets on the music they cut long ago. If it’s not pure nostalgia, it’s close. But to be 44, in the game for twenty years, and still be doing new, innovative work that resonates with the public? NEVER! Especially today, when it’s no longer about physical and only the hard core buys the new work…which promptly falls off the chart. The new music tends to be a rationalization for the tour.

So…

The great thing about Ghost’s music is it’s not for everybody. They’re not compromising. And it’s working. They sell out arenas and their latest album, “Skeletá,” entered the chart at number one.

And we hear all about the Swifties, but hard rock/metal fans NEVER abandon the act, they’ve got the strongest fanbase extant. To triumph in hard rock/metal…you’ve made it forever. Meaning Ghost is a veritable phenomenon. But they don’t rap, they don’t employ outside songwriters, they’re in the Ghost business, like in the old days where every band was unique.

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So if you’re listening with your thinking cap on, stop. That’s not how a non-fan new to this music is supposed to listen to this. You’re supposed to crank the tunes and let them wash over you and see if they penetrate.

And many people won’t like Ghost. But unlike their brethren in the Active Rock ghetto, there’s melody and harmony, WHAT A CONCEPT!

This music is not made for a dinner party. Rather this is the kind of music you play when you’re insanely happy or morbidly depressed. It speaks to you in those moods. And when you do listen there are no outside touchpoints, you’re in your own cocoon. And there are guitars…but really, a lot of this stuff is closer to early Queen than Metallica.

So when you drop the needle on a new album and don’t immediately take it off, if you’re inspired to listen all the way through, a song or two might jump out. You’re not expecting it to, it’s not because it’s been promoted as a single, it’s just that it resonates. There have been three radio tracks released from “Skeletá,” and “Guiding Lights” is not one of them. Because it doesn’t really fit the format. The broad rock of the old days? Yes. But “Guiding Lights” is not angry, as a matter of fact you can argue it’s beautiful.

“That the road that leads to nowhere is long

And that those who seek to go there are lost”

This is the magic right here, the anthemic chorus. A veritable hard rock chorus. This is the hook. Not only the choir-like effect of the vocalizations, but the lyricism, there’s a melody you can pick out and sing along to, or at least nod your head to.

And then there’s a twist:

“The guiding lights, they lead you on

And the road that leads to nowhere is long”

Yes, the chorus of “Guiding Lights” makes the track. That’s what stood out, made me take notice, want to play the song again.

The song starts with this riff, it sounds like it’s played on a toy piano.

Then the verse. This is very low key. Like you’re in the forest on a moonless night.

But then the number builds through the pre-chorus:

“There stood my God before me

Do you know what they said?”

This is the change that brings you to the anthemic chorus, that sets you up, it’s the pitcher’s windup before the ball is sent hurtling to the plate.

And this is not Pulitzer prize wordsmithing, but having said that…

“The road that leads to nowhere is long”

This is where so many hard rock listeners believe they’re going…NOWHERE! They’re on a journey, but no one is paying attention to it. They figure if they stay in the wilderness long enough they’ll find their people and a modicum of happiness.

Then again, you can interpret this as a love song. The end of a relationship. The road to ending is long and torturous. At the end there is no prize, there’s nothing. But still, the great thing is the nowhere metaphor works if you’re just alienated too.

And unlike so much hard rock/metal, you can interpret the song on a romantic level, it’s not all devils and dungeons, which is why women are drawn in. Sure, there are misanthropic women into bombastic hard rock/metal, but most want something more. I just Googled “Ghost have female fans” and this is was the top hit, from Reddit:

“Why does this fanbase have so many more women compared to other rock bands?”

And then there’s a specific question:

“First off, it’s a good thing! As a woman, it makes me really happy to see so many other girls that are into rock music.

“I’m just puzzled as to why Ghost has so many more female fans compared to other rock bands. It seems like most other band’s concerts are predominantly male.”

Why does this fanbase have so many more women compared to other rock bands?
byu/firstreformer inGhostbc

It’s the MUSIC!

The other acts have the look, with the leather and the studs…once again, almost a caricature of the scene, but Ghost has thrown that over and is appearing on stage…the band members are wearing robes.

All this means if you like this kind of music, you can come in from the wilderness, someone made a record just for you. They didn’t need to make it so angry and noisy and shouty that it turned off all but the hard core.

And you can be a fan and it delivers more than the music. The show cements the deal.

The road that leads to nowhere may be long, but so is the road to somewhere. Which is why so much of the good, groundbreaking sounds come from people who are older, who have lived a little while. They’ve got perspective, they’ve got something to say.

And in this case, I want to listen to it!