Ghost brings dark theatrics, heavy metal flair to near-capacity Rocket Arena (review)

Swedish rock band Ghost, led by frontman Papa V Perpetua, stopped off at Rocket Arena during their Skeletour World Tour on Thursday night, July 17, 2025.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Hard rock/metal band Ghost has built a dedicated following with a mix of catchy, melodic metal and hard rock whose appeal crosses generations. They also have expert marketing, multimedia theatricality and conceptual world-building that attracts obsessive fans who love to look for “Easter eggs” while consuming the band lore and connecting the conceptual breadcrumbs dropped by their favorite artists.

The Sweden-based band is on the biggest American tour yet in its nearly 20-year history. And for a band steeped in Satan and Satan-adjacent subjects as the basis for its imagery and lyrics, becoming one of the largest arena bands on the road is quite an impressive feat.

Headlining Rocket Arena on Thursday night, Ghost brought all its musical and visual elements together to excite and charm a hyped Ohio crowd with a tight two-hour set that had everyone humming their favorite hooks as they exited the arena by 10 p.m.

Despite all the campy, spooky imagery and songs directly and indirectly about Ol’ Scratch and his unholy activities, Ghost mainly wants the audience just to have a good time. To that end, frontman, band leader and mastermind Papa V Perpetua — a.k.a Tobias Forge — and the various “Nameless Ghouls,” who co-write many of the band’s songs, have subsumed the many strains of metal and hard rock and developed a knack for big, catchy choruses buoyed by Forge’s clear, high and articulate tenor. It’s arguably one of the reasons Ghost has graduated to filling arenas with fans of a wide age range. For the younger rockers, Ghost’s hard rock/metal amalgam and ever-growing lore of characters and plot lines likely feel fresh and different, while many older fans are transported back to the warm-and-fuzzy days of ’80s melodic hard rock and arena metal. Both groups of folks seem to understand that underneath all the Satan-stuff in the lyrics — and the corpse paint, gloomy masks, skeleton-emblazoned unitards with bat wings and dark cloaks — many of the band’s songs are about basic human issues, particularly love and perseverance, just with a Satanic bent. And, above all those heady themes, their shows are just fun, theatrical rock shows.

Swedish rock band Ghost, led by frontman Papa V Perpetua, stopped off at Rocket Arena during their Skeletour World Tour on Thursday night, July 17, 2025.

Ghost is touring with a “no phone” policy. Fans were given a Yondr bag at entry to lock their phones for the duration of the show. It’s a practice several artists have adopted in the smartphone era with varying degrees of success and backlash. Overall, the Ghost crowd didn’t seem to mind, as concertgoers carried the phone bags, which were unlocked upon exiting the arena. It was refreshing to be at a concert where the entire crowd was actively watching and participating in the show rather than being amateur iPhone concert documentarians. The lack of constant phone fondling fed the communal feel of the entire experience.

Opening with the first two tracks from their latest album, the pop-metal leaning “Skeleta” — which topped the Billboard 200 chart — the tone was set by Forge and his band, and the near sold-out audience immediately sang-shouted along to the arena-rocking “Peacefield” and the riff-heavy “Lachryma.” The band pulled from from much of its six-album and several-EP catalog, leaning heavily on the new album and their 2015 Grammy- and Grammis-winning release “Meliora.”

The setlist was packed with singalong tunes for the “Ghouls” in the audience. The mellow “He Is,” the gritty ’70s inspired, organ-laced “Majesty,” and the spooky, melodramatic “Year Zero” — with its choral chant of “Bilial! Behemoth! Beezlebub! Asmodeus! Satanas! Lucifer!” — all had folks singing and throwing up the traditional metal goat horns. There were also non-Satanic moments revealing the band’s big heart beneath all the corpse paint and evil stuff. The retro, ’60s-pop sounding “The Future Is a Foreign Land,” had fans singing “If it all burns down, I will hold you close for the minute,” and in “Darkness at the Heart of My Love,” Forge and fans gang-sang “Remember always, That love is all you need. Tell me who you wanna be, and I will set you free,” with equal fervor.

Swedish rock band Ghost, led by frontman Papa V Perpetua, stopped off at Rocket Arena during their Skeletour World Tour on Thursday night, July 17, 2025.

The stage was a sort of octagonal horseshoe with a catwalk for the always active and lanky guitarists to stalk as they dutifully recreated the songs and constantly exhorted the crowd to yell and sing. The entire band was masked and in constant motion. The two skeletal backup singers perched on risers waved and undulated, the keyboardists played their parts with outsized flair, and there was even a dramatic keytar solo during the chunky death metal-lite “Mummy Dust.”

Forge had a few costume changes, mostly referencing past “Papas.” The most theatrical moment came when Forge sang “Majesty” at the back of the stage on a riser, adorned in a massive papal hat and an overlong gown, while the main lighting rig — shaped like the band’s upside-down cross logo — bathed him in contrasting colors.

Throughout the show, Forge’s banter was light and friendly, thanking the crowd for showing up and showing out in costumes, and generally belying the band’s well-constructed image by being a regular dude.

The near sold out crowd came costumed to play. Black was the color of the evening, and there were naughty nuns, corpse brides in dessicated wedding dresses, several spot-on versions of past iterations of the Ghost frontman, a full-sized masked purple Teletubby, a cornucopia of skeletons, and hundreds of corpse-painted faces.

Four decades ago, Ghost’s imagery, macabre lyrics and dedication to the whole Satan bit would have had self-appointed music morality policewoman Tipper Gore and her PMRC crew clutching their pearls tightly enough to choke themselves. But in 2025, Ghost’s Satanic trappings serve more of a backdrop to the expertly marketed world-building and as a delivery system for Forge and his co-writers’ clear love of the history, breadth and depth of hard rock and heavy metal music.

So... hail Satan, I guess. 🤘

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Swedish rock band Ghost, led by frontman Papa V Perpetua, stopped off at Rocket Arena during their Skeletour World Tour on Thursday night, July 17, 2025.

Swedish rock band Ghost, led by frontman Papa V Perpetua, stopped off at Rocket Arena during their Skeletour World Tour on Thursday night, July 17, 2025.

Swedish rock band Ghost, led by frontman Papa V Perpetua, stopped off at Rocket Arena during their Skeletour World Tour on Thursday night, July 17, 2025.

Swedish rock band Ghost, led by frontman Papa V Perpetua, stopped off at Rocket Arena during their Skeletour World Tour on Thursday night, July 17, 2025.

Swedish rock band Ghost, led by frontman Papa V Perpetua, stopped off at Rocket Arena during their Skeletour World Tour on Thursday night, July 17, 2025.

Swedish rock band Ghost, led by frontman Papa V Perpetua, stopped off at Rocket Arena during their Skeletour World Tour on Thursday night, July 17, 2025.

Swedish rock band Ghost, led by frontman Papa V Perpetua, stopped off at Rocket Arena during their Skeletour World Tour on Thursday night, July 17, 2025.