Skeletá is without a doubt the most thematically diverse album by Ghost to date, not revolving around a single concept as much as other albums had. If I had to describe the theme of Skeletá succinctly I would have one answer: being human. As an introspective record the songs are far removed from the occult, satanic or otherwise religious themes of Ghost’s prior work, and instead appeal to the hearts of the listeners. Skeletá rockets from the heights of hopeful resurgence to the depths of heartbreak and fear of death, making the most tear jerking record in Ghost’s discography. The only way to tackle an album this thematically rich is to go track by track and break down the themes (I will try my darndest to make this different from lyrical analysis, since there is an excellent article about that!) and how they coincide with other tracks. For the sake of brevity and making up my own mind, I will summarize the theme of each track in a few words, and break down my readings of them as best I can. With that being said, let’s get Satanized (Skeletized?)
PEACEFIELD - POST REVOLUTIONARY OPTIMISM
The old regime has fallen and with it everything we know, let’s make our own meaning.
Now that the dust has settled on the revolutionary battlefield, the rebels are left to wonder. A new world has dawned from the ashes of the old, its fields watered by the blood of the slaughtered monarchs that repressed the would be rebels. With the old empire reduced to rubble and its figureheads long gone, the revolutionaries must ask themselves a new question: what next?
Peacefield is about believing in a better tomorrow and making your own meaning from nothing. The theme of the song is hope, and more specifically hope for the freedom that can only arise by tearing down everything that came before. Even the refrains to revolutionary violence are not necessarily in a negative light, but they are regarded the same way as other revolutionary hardships are. A rallying cry for the next generation to enjoy the fruits of the revolution explains the repeated calls of “oh child”. The calls to stay close to the speaker is realization that rebuilding will be messy but the dawn of prosperity will be bright and wonderful.
LACHRYMA - I WILL NOT DECEIVE MYSELF INTO LOVING YOU ANYMORE
I’ve been lying to myself that you’re worth it and the imbalance has been tearing me apart, but I’m done crying over you.
Relationships cannot always work out, and what we once think to be love is sometimes our own wishful thinking. Lachryma is about someone who has been deceiving themselves into thinking the love for someone is real, but when they’re alone it hurts them because it is nothing but draining. This is where the comparisons to vampirism come from, the love they deceived themselves into feeds on them at night, a nocturnal longing for true connection. The speaker reimagines themselves as a vampire, ripping through the poems of their ‘lover’ and becoming darker to truly understand their nocturnal foe.
Despite these themes the song is one of liberation similar to Peacefield, yet not from under an oppressive regime but from their own delusions. They declare “I’m done / crying over someone like you” to make sure they are breaking this chain of not making the same mistake again. Only through realization of what was hurting them can they escape towards a better love.
SATANIZED - I FEEL LOVE SO STRONG IT’S LIKE I AM POSSESSED
I’ve been coerced by love to break from the institutions in which I was raised to begin a different life.
Satanized is steeped in the themes of religious repression from which Ghost first sprang, but it is utilized for a narrative of love and acceptance of ones self. The lyrics of the track make the point that the narrator has been lead to believe that the love they feel is not normal and is a problem to be solved. Through acceptance of the love that religious entities labelled as possession the speaker admits they must be “satanized”
In my eyes there is a blatant angle about this song in relation to the emphasis placed on heterosexual relationships in traditional institutions like the church, which could mean that the song could be interpreted as any type of love which applies to the listener, making a more healing and accepting track by extension of that. This is where the themes of being lead to believe that this love is heresy (blasphemy?) tie into this reading of the track, and the long history that the church has had on making people feel like there is something wrong with them for loving who they want to love.
Satanized is the best kind of love song, that anyone can sing along to because it describes the feelings of being so in love that you feel a break from your previous life into a new understanding of oneself.
GUIDING LIGHTS - REGRET FOR INACTION AND POWERLESSNESS
You’re going the wrong direction and I know it, but I cannot tell you because I cannot lose you.
And now Ghost begins to tempt tears. The song revolves around seeing a close friend going the wrong direction in life, but being powerless to stop them from going that way. Amongst this fear is also a profound sense of regret for not informing them earlier. There was a passed opportunity to inform that the road both narrator and friend were going down was the wrong one, and while the narrator got off the road they didn’t say anything to the friend. The only thing preventing the narrator from speaking is fear of losing the friendship.
Notable to the pre-chorus is the almost taunting quality of the god that appears before the narrator and later both narrator and friend. The god confronts the narrator to let them know that the path the friend is going down is the wrong one and that they’re lost.
Such is the anguish of the narrator that they lament that if its not them appealing to the friend that some external, perhaps divine force, will intervene on their behalf. The narrator pleads to the friend asking if they can hear this divine intervention and stray from their path. However a final repetition of ‘the road that leads to nowhere is long’ is a recognition that the situation is hopeless and it is too late.
DE PROFUNDIS BOREALIS - ESCAPING YOUR SELF IMPOSED PRISON
I’m tired of being chained by regrets and words unsaid, I will emerge from my cage.
De Profundis Borealis brings us back to outright optimism from the somber themes of Guiding Lights, indeed building off the themes of regret in the previous track. The song is about the narrator emerging from the ‘Northern Abyss’ (which ties in nicely to Guiding Lights, that could be read as the Aurora borealis) to a brighter dawn.
Lyrically the track deals very heavily with a sense of regret and missed opportunities and the hopelessness that sets in as a result. The narrator is speaking once more to the subject directly, reassuring them that these past transgressions mean nothing and the life they want is just within reach. The subject must endure this prison until their sentence is over, in which case the cell door will fling open and they can move on. The ‘palace built of frozen tears’ is the wallowing in mistakes that the subject has occupied themselves with, not realizing it is imprisoning and keeping them from moving on with their life. But by virtue of being frozen, enough warmth will melt this prison and release the prisoner.
CENOTAPH - WE CARRY OUR PASSED LOVED ONES WITH US, ALWAYS
There may be a coffin and a headstone, but your true final resting place is by my side as long as I live.
Cenotaph is an exploration of how we process grief and carry the memory of loved ones with us, through highs and lows of life. The lyrics play with boundary between the earthly and celestial planes, with the peak of a mountain joining the earth and the sky being evocative of the dead and the living. The narrator finds the memory of their loved everywhere in life, even in the extremes of joy and sorrow, and despite them seemingly being buried they are still ever present. The eternal nature of the passed riding next to the living means that the connection is not just emotional, but spiritual. Even amidst the rush of life the narrator still knows the spirit is still there. Cenotaph captures the bittersweet notion that those that we lose never truly leave us.
MISSILIA AMORI - LOVE DEGRADED TO OBSESSIVE HATE
If you cannot return my love then you shall be subject to all of my hate, bearing the mask of the love you knew.
The album has been very understanding, uplifting and downright tragic up to this point, now its time for it to get mean. While in Satanized Papa sang about feeling love so strong he felt possessed, now he sings about a twisted form of love. This track is a manipulation anthem, dripping in wounded pride and toxic love toward someone who dared to not love them anymore.
The lyrics of the track blur the lines between love and violence, with the soft love being made harsh by the rockets in the chorus.The speaker is bitter, hurt and making every attempt they can to reel their lover back in. They speak with a sense of urgency for their former lover to give in and love them back, since there is nothing the former lover can do to stay away from them. ‘Wherever you may hide away, I’m gonna hunt you down” spoken with a seductive candor is beautifully manipulative, and emphasizes that there is no way out.
MARKS OF THE EVIL ONE - EVIL IS CRAWLING OUT OF THE DARKNESS
How can you not see that from every corner darkness is creeping into the world?
Perhaps the only track that is concerned with themes of albums like Meliora and IMPERA, Marks of the Evil One is about an observant narrator desperately shouting at the people around them to pay attention to the darkness seeping into the world. Mentions are made to the four horsemen of the apocalypse, a clear sign of the oncoming end of times.
The image of the world as presented in this track is perhaps the darkest, defined by urgency and desperation for people to notice the signs of evil taking over society. In the lyrics of the song there is a certainty in the destruction to which the world will be subjected, all of the riders and Hades coming to bear. Within these lyrics there is also an element of frustration in the failure to recognize and the brushing off of when clear signs of the end of times are coming. The cries of ‘watch!’ and ‘there is a fucking, there!’ show this urgency and getting fed up with a lack of recognition for being able to realize what is taking place.
UMBRA - REMEMBER THAT LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED
Join me in the shadows where we can be free and in love.
This track is about embracing the darker sides of life but still finding respite in the love that can be had. The title ‘Umbra’ meaning shadow speaks to the secrecy and the rush of hidden desires. Contrasting eroticism and religious imagery makes clear that this song is about a forbidden kind of love, similar to that in Satanized, a love that is shunned by the powers that be. Perhaps the stigma against this love is what makes it so fulfilling, the desire for the forbidden gives those partaking a rush of adrenaline.
Put as simply as I can, this song is about making love in a holy site to represent the acceptance of our most simple urges amidst a society that shuns it. Love is all we need, and no institution, no holy relic, no social order can keep us from that.
EXCELSIS - DO NOT FEAR DEATH, CHERISH LIFE
We are all going to die some day, but that is okay because there is so much we can while we are alive
Excelsis is a heart wrenching, profound exploration of mortality and the human experience with death. Perhaps the ultimate ‘goodbye’ track, Excelsis has brought countless devoted listeners to tears. The track masterfully blends fear and acceptance, with its lyrics offering solace as much as heartache over the prospect of death. Thinking about death has bled into nearly every Ghost project since Prequelle and this is the closest to a conclusion that it has come. Excelsis offers that death is a cleaning of the slate and the only true way to achieve peace.
Through stark reminders of mortality for singer and listener, a mantra that is comforting and haunting, but suggests that because this is the thing we can be sure of, what use is there to run? If I will die and so will you, why must we waste time questioning what will happen when it comes, instead of welcoming when it does arrive. The track urges the listener to make the most of their limited time, to make peace in their life, with redemption being possible up until the very end.
Do we really want eternal life, if the beauty of life is that we must make the most of our time simply because it is limited? Excelsis says no, it is okay to be afraid of eternity, because we all are.
SKELETÁ - MOVING ON FROM WHAT CAME BEFORE?
There is always panic with these sorts of things, so let’s get theoretical
When breaking down these tracks from Skeletá the one constant I noticed among a majority of the tracks is a sort of reverence for the past but a willingness to move past it (with the exception of Marks of the Evil One). I cannot help but see this as a sort of meta narrative for the band’s history, and a response to the debates over what is best for Ghost. The five prior albums while thematically diverse are all recognizable as the same product, but Skeletá is a sharp detour from this, only dabbling in the gothic, occult themes that prior albums had lauded so heavy, and moving from narrative towards introspection.
With Peacefield telling us to be hopeful for what can happen now that we’re at the dawn of a new age and Excelsis helping us come to terms with loss, can this not be seen as a thematic line of saying goodbye to what came before with the band? With Forge now unmasked on stage, and what can be considered the “original story” of Ghost succinctly wrapped up in Rite Here Rite Now, maybe what we need to do now is take this change in stride and follow wherever this road goes.