If Ghost sometimes seems like the best of 80s metal meets non-secular Broadway via Vegas show (only louder than any church you’ve ever been in) attending a Ghost show is like traveling back to 2006 to see said spectacle. Why, you ask? Because they took our phones.

Safely ensconced in protective pouches which could only be opened through a device similar to clothing tag removal at Macy’s on exiting the theater, this was the first time I had been to a concert and had to…sit and watch the entire show. Ghost know what they are doing.

Like a Broadway show, they started promptly at 8 (give or take a few minutes for the announcement scolding anyone who might have a second phone and therefore detracting from their and their fellow concertgoer’s experience) and from the moment the opening strains of “Kaisarion” melted our brains, Tobias Forge and his gang of faceless Nameless Ghouls took control of the evening it was, in a word, glorious. And funny.

Stage antics between “Papa Emeritus IV” and over excited Ghoul guitarists peppered the evening to great comic relief among the more intense versions of “Rats” and “Spillways” and “Call Me Little Sunshine”. That’s the thing about Ghost. They want to appear SERIOUS and dangerous but they are really jokesters and pranksters intent on tickling the audience who, with rapturous devil horns sing back every word to Papa.

At a mid-show interlude, Forge arrived at the other end of the auditorium where, on an elevated platform, appearing almost magically, cellists and piano accompanied him in the Roxy Erikson cover “If You Have Ghosts” whereupon, Papa is dressed in a robe and boxing gloves…why? To make his way BACK to the stage, as a fighter, as a conqueror, as a hero, be he anti-hero. The gloves are never seen again.

As if to raise the spectacle past eleven, the band was joined onstage by eight dancers in skeleton outfits to perform choreography to “Twenties” a song I hear as a pretty raw indictment of current American politics but which Forge has described as a “party track”…so, of course…Solid Gold dancers, right??? This, apparently, was the debut of this piece of stagecraft which lends credence to the concert-goers behind me who suggested that the reason our phones were taken was because these series of shows (two at the Forum) might be recorded for DVD release, as they had never had their phones confiscated before).

A Ghost show is relentless. It’s religious. It’s a circus. These same fans around me, some on their 19th and 20th Ghost shows (they were attending both nights), some having flown in from Milwaukee, some bearing homemade Ghost related bracelets and handing them out to everyone around them (“Don’t worry, YOU’RE getting one!” She said to me, more a declaration than a promise) were only disappointed because they were sure that this would be the retirement of this Papa and the unveiling of the next. That didn’t happen.

Not at the show I saw. So, I guess I have to make it to another Ghost show to witness the next iteration of this Pied Piper of Progressive Doom Arena Metal. Mark my words, I will be there. Without a phone. So I can take it all in. The way a concert should be.

Review by: @areallulu Photos by: Ryan Chang

Like what you read? Follow our social media and playlist for the latest in independent music:

Ghost Haunts LA's Kia Forum with a Spirited Night of Music