Ghost | Akateeminen Kirjakauppa

GHOST has confirmed the release of its feverishly awaited new album: SKELETÁ, the GRAMMY-winning Swedish theatrical rock icons’ first full length offering of new material since 2022’s international #1 charting IMPERA.

SKELETÁ’s impending arrival is heralded by anthemic first single “Satanized,” and its unsettling new video featuring a first glimpse of GHOST's newly anointed ringleader Papa V Perpetua—whose ascension was foreshadowed by the recent V is Coming! campaign, which culminated in the recent Sin City conclave that saw him crowned. "A demonic possession unlike any before” has never sounded so sweet as it does here — An avalanche of infectious hooks and harmonies is buoyed by a hypnotic shuffle, as the narrator succumbs to dark forces within and without, helplessly acknowledging their own blasphemy and heresy as it inexorably consumes them. By the time the song's opening lines "There is something inside me and they don’t know if there is a cure” have moved from the inner monologue of the possessed to the ears of the hapless listener, it will already be too late: You will have been “Satanized.”

Today also marks the debut of The Satanizer (LINK), a first of its kind music video experience for fans who wish to be “Satanized.” Developed in partnership with Jason Zada (Elf Yourself), The Satanizer will morph its users into characters featured in the song’s melodramatic video. With a quick upload of their photo, The Satanizer will send out a personalized music video clip featuring the participant, who can in turn share via social media that they too have been “Satanized."

The genesis of SKELETÁ is rooted in the wake of a world-spanning years-long touring campaign in support of IMPERA—a period that saw IMPERA top album charts the world over and winning an American Music Award and an iHeart Radio Music Award, as well as the band earning its first RIAA-certified platinum single (“Mary on a Cross”) and presiding over the highest grossing hard rock cinema event in North American history (its feature film debut RITE HERE RITE NOW). As this sustained maelstrom ultimately wound down, GHOST mastermind Tobias Forge’s next uncharted creative direction would prove to be an inward journey. This deeply introspective turn in Forge’s creative process would ultimately result in SKELETÁ: a collection of 10 new songs originating from and cutting as close to the bone as (in)humanly possible.

GHOST’s sixth psalm, SKELETÁ, is its most unflinchingly introspective work to date. Where previous GHOST albums dealt largely with chronicling and/or observing outward facing subject matter—such as IMPERA’s meditations on the rise and fall of empires and its predecessor Prequelle’s evocations of the ravages of era-defining plagues—SKELETA’s lyrics render the distinct individual emotional vistas of each of its 10 songs in one-on-one fashion, at times as if in a dialogue with oneself in a mirror. The end result is a singular collection of timeless, universal sentiments, all filtered through a prism of a uniquely personal point of view.

As GHOST continues to strengthen its bond with the world-spanning legion of kindred souls that commune with the band and each other at its vaunted live rituals, it’s no exaggeration to describe GHOST — and the uniquely intense connection formed with the faithful who find refuge in the personae, lore and world Forge has created -- as a singular global phenomenon.