The return of Tobias Forge and his choirboys to Portugal after six years at the Sala Tejo held a lot of promise. The show, where the use of cell phones was strictly forbidden, marked the choice of the successor to Pope Francis, Oops... I mean Pope Emeritus IV, who was left in the hands of Pope V Perpetua.
At the end of the afternoon, the Expo area, the Vasco da Gama shopping center and the surrounding area looked like the Vatican, with so many priests and nuns hanging around, waiting for the doors to open, which happened at 6:30pm. Here's a point to note: there was a lot of concern about the entrance to the venue, the issue of the bag to store cell phones, whether it would take time and cause delays, something that was done exquisitely by the production and structure of the venue.
Returning to the music, the Ghost released on Friday, April 25, their latest work entitled "Skeletá", the sixth album from the band that almost never makes a mistake. Here Tobias makes a clear declaration of love for the hard rock and AOR sound of the 80s, full of influence and elements from bands like Journey, Def Leppard and Scorpions, which pleased most fans. The concert began full of expectations, as there was no opening band and the audience waited around an hour and a half for the first chords of the liturgical song "Miserere mei, Deus" by Gregorio Allegri, which took a good few minutes, increasing the anxiety of an audience with a low average age, to the point where Forge unassumingly launched into "Tomorrow is a school day".
As soon as Tobias finished the first chorus, the curtain fell with the first sound explosion of the night, to the sound of "Peacefield" and then another new Skeletá song "Lachryma" sung at the top of their lungs by the majority of the audience, who had little time to memorize the lyrics of the recently released album. Mixing songs from all six of their albums, the band began with "Spirit" and "From the Pinnacle to the Pit" from their third album Meliora, which, incidentally, made up the bulk of the set list with six tracks, and then the first climax of the night with "Call Me Little Sunshine", in which the Meo Arena went wild, with the first appearance of Papa V Perpetua, dressed appropriately and sometimes looking like an alien robot.
In his first interaction with the audience, Tobias made it clear: "It's a miracle we're here today," referring to the blackout on Monday, less than 24 hours before the start of the concert. The fact is that everything went more than well, especially from "Satanized" onwards, another new song that was presented to the audience who already knew all the lyrics by heart, with a different set and new lights creating a new atmosphere. And then Pope V Perpetua appears again, this time with the aid of an elevator under the stage to perform the brutal "Year Zero", with the Meo Arena in satanic unison making all the pillars tremble, certainly one of those moments that we will remember for a long time, without needing a cell phone to film it.
The concert was already heading towards its finale, with powerful classics such as "He Is" and "Rats", which once again sent everyone into delirium, accompanied by their faithful and loyal Nameless Ghouls, those anonymous masked musicians who accompany Tobias on stage and who are a real spectacle in their own right, such is their technical quality and stage presence. During his farewell speech, Tobias gave one last speech, making reference to the many times Ghost had played in Portugal, and sent out "Monstrance Clock", closing the concert as if it were a black mass shared by all the fans.
When they returned for the Encore, Tobias made the funniest line of the night, "Now that we've played the best ones, let's play the bad ones now", joking about the fact that "Mary On A Cross" has become a TikTok classic, and is one of the songs most eagerly awaited by younger fans. Then "Dance Macabre", already an absolute classic of the band, followed by "Square Hammer" closed a memorable evening in an apotheotic and theatrical way that took us straight back to the 90s when there were no cell phones, just the audience with their eyes, hearts and the music, something we needed to remember and Ghost did it exquisitely.
Artists: Ghost
English 
Portuguese