There’s an irony to 18,000 people standing in a hockey arena on Valentine’s Day, stripped of their smartphones, watching a man in papal robes sing about the antichrist.
Returning to Vancouver for the first time in seven years last night (February 14) with their Skeletour, Ghost transformed Rogers Arena into a sanctuary of symphonic blasphemy, though the sermon took a while to find its fire.
The atmosphere was thick with incense and a strange, pre-social media nostalgia. While I sketched stage details like I was documenting a crime scene, the masses — severed from their habitual feeds — seemed to be relearning the ancient art of paying attention.
A fan dressed as Jesus even led a choir in the VIP section — a bit of literal soul-saving for the front row, perhaps? — added to a night that carried a late-Halloween vibe rather than the Hallmark holiday at hand. I couldn’t help but wonder if some were disappointed by the lack of hanky-panky frontman Tobias Forge later joked about, though the crowd seemed plenty seduced by the music alone.
The production itself was a slow burn. Early on, the stage felt clean to a fault, lacking the intricate physical structures of the band’s previous tours and relying on animations that felt thin in such a massive space.
For the first few tracks, Ghost moved with a weary accuracy, almost as if catching their breath. But the Swedes understand the art of the crescendo — and when the visuals shifted to the orange volcano for “Rats” and the Dante-inspired stained-glass backdrops, the space came alive.
The instrumental precision — a new maturity in their sound — shone on “Cirice.” The bass and guitar rumbled through the floorboards with a physical weight that made it impossible to look away… though it was a shame no one could immortalize that specific moment (the mental screenshot, at least, was high resolution).
Forge remained the night’s magnetic centre, like a prophet who is as much a master of wit as he is a vocalist. While the arena’s acoustics occasionally muddied his lower register, his studio-perfect “Monstrance Clock” performance proved that his range hasn’t lost its edge.
His interaction with the Vancouver adepts was the secret sauce: Forge acknowledged the seven-year absence with a genuine apology before introducing “The Future Is a Foreign Land,” and his comedic timing regarding red bras and the stadium security (apparently there to protect us from him) kept the ritual from tipping into self-seriousness.
The finale was a masterclass in release. “Year Zero” brought the fire — literally — and “Dance Macabre” turned the stiff floor into a disco. The evening ended with a festive explosion of confetti and the anthemic “Square Hammer,” the Meliora track that has become a genre-defining hymn.
As Forge blew kisses to a crowd of painted faces, grandparents and weeping teenagers alike, the slow start was forgiven. It was an anti-religious experience that somehow felt holy — a mass where the only dogma is committing to the paint and showing up.
