GHOST - Impera

Now on their fifth studio album, Ghost have nothing left to hide. That mysterious, comic-book-style iconography that first introduced us to the band is melting away like snow in the sun, along with their darker, more occult influences, here reduced to a not-even-particularly-subtle Crowley-esque pose on the cover.

It no longer even makes sense to say "the Pope is dead, long live the Pope", because the whole game built around the figure of Papa Emeritus (with fictional heirs abdicating album after album) has been settled by Tobias Forge's self-appointed status as sole leader. A Pontifex Maximus who's scorched the earth around him, falling out with all the bishops and cardinals once in his service (not for nothing, in the booklet of the record, the other musicians are simply labeled "a group of nameless ghouls").

So let's forget about two excellent albums like "Opvs Eponymovs" (2010) and "Infestissumam" (2013). They belong to another era. By contrast, "Impera" doggedly persists with the ultra-melodic hard (pop) rock already showcased on the decent "Meliora" from 2015 (the transitional record) and on the subsequent, insubstantial "Prequelle" (2018).

Arena rock, to be precise, because Ghost's music in recent years has become a horror spectacle for the masses: huge stage sets, pomp to spare, and phones held up to the sky to immortalize a frontman increasingly beloved by young and old alike, regardless of everything else.

Riding this ever more imposing wave, Tobias Forge didn't hesitate to slot the famous "Hunter's Moon" into the album's tracklist (a convincing, old-school-flavored number), a song already appreciated over the end credits of David Gordon Green's forgettable "Halloween Kills".

Besides the aforementioned track, there are few other songs that escape anonymity: the fine big single "Call Me Little Sunshine", the brilliant "Spillways" (a track that confirms the importance of Abba and Queen in Forge's musical background), and then "Watcher In The Sky", a rocking midtempo that might just win over the heavy-metal die-hards still holding out.

Too little to pass the test, given the sharp and sudden dip that marks the second half of the album, symbolically opened by the theatrical posturing of "Twenties" (a short-winded diversion) and the sugary notes of the semi-ballad "Darkness At The Heart Of My Love" (when romance reeks of plastic). You can feel the emptiness, even in the closing "Respite On The Spitalfields", which has a decent refrain but is too limp to rightfully join the ranks of Ghost's timeless classics.

While awaiting another hypothetical puff of white smoke, Papa Emeritus IV is enjoying the empire he's built year after year. But behind that in some ways untouchable mask, his substance is disintegrating at the speed of light.

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11/03/2022