- Country: Sweden
- Style: Heavy metal / Hard rock
- Label: Loma Vista Recordings
- Release date: 21 August 2015
Within a minute of “Spirit” it is clear this is a different Ghost. Bigger, brighter, more guitar. The velvet-curtain occult camp is still there, but Meliora puts the riffs up front and lets them bite.
Klas Åhlund’s production turns out to be an inspired fit. “From the Pinnacle to the Pit” rides a bass line so fat it almost wobbles, and “Mummy Dust” is the band at its most deliciously sleazy, a mid-tempo strut that wouldn’t sound out of place on a seventies horror soundtrack.
Then there’s “Cirice”. It builds from a slow, tolling intro to a chorus that is pure melancholy, and it’s the song that made a lot of metal fans who had written Ghost off as a gimmick sit up and listen. “He Is” goes the other way entirely, an acoustic, nearly hymnal ballad that is as sincere as anything this band has done.
The short interludes “Spöksonat” and “Devil Church” keep the pacing theatrical, and “Deus in Absentia” closes with a choral swell that feels like the curtain coming down. Ten songs, no filler. It’s the album where the joke stopped being the point.
Best tracks:
Cirice
From the Pinnacle to the Pit
Mummy Dust
He Is
Deus in Absentia
Author’s rating: 8.9/10
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