Ghost – "Skeleta"

2025-07-16

Half music review, half essay about those four chords that made a million

As a metalhead, you'd have to have lived under a rock (no pun etc.) to not have noticed it back around 2010 when everyone started to go more or less nuts about Ghost. And although far from a full-out convertee, I could totally understand the hype. That synergy between Mercyful Fate-style NWoBHM, a clear-cut production, and infectious melodies apprising darkly profane matters, all clad in an esoterism and occultism no more facetious than necessary, was a uniquely welcome addition to the global hard rock and metal scene.

In time, Ghost frontman and mastermind Tobias Forge – much like his Avantasia pendant colleague and namesake Tobias Sammet – branched out into more classic stadium territory and started to incorporate elements from not only regular ol' rock music, but various hand-picked ingredients from all over the world of post-'60s rhythmic music. His last album, for example, featured bits and pieces that I recognized from AOR, dancehall, Whitesnake, Van Halen, and Porcupine Tree.

This whole speculation in versatility could be said to be one of the band's primary strengths, and many a fan would probably concur with this notion. However, it has also endued Forge with the convenient stratagem to simply turn up that pop dial at his discretion, because hey, we're using time-tested ideas anyway, and it's just music… right?

Indeed, "Peacefield", the opener this time around, is neat, clean, and cute more than anything else. That Major-key melody is really straddling the line. The whole thing crescendoes, and the hard rock-buildup is cool, but as the drums enter, the big, expected explosion isn't as big as expected. The sound seems a bit retained: The choir and the guitars are huge, but the drums are oddly stiff, dry, and compressed. Also, the riffing is a bit too palm-muted – we need some massive power chord thunder claps here. The song is written like one of those opening tracks that's supposed to develop and grow into a big bang, but the instruments can't seem to agree on where everything's going.

It's not bad, and you'll remember the sound and expression. It's just not as interesting as it's often presented by people who presumably got into Ghost before discovering artists like Toto and Sting – artists whose versatility seem to happen effortlessly rather than by deliberate application.

"Lachryma", then, picks it up a bit with a loveably mean b5-based main riff channeled from the darker end of NWoBHM – think "Am I Evil?". Then, however, and as should surprise nobody who's familiar with the band, the song shifts into synthpop. And then, ladies and gentlemen, the chorus introduces… *drum roll*…

The vi–IV–I–V Chord Progression!

I'm gonna have to go out on an elaborate side-note for those unfamiliar with music theory: The vi–IV–I–V progression (you can read it as "six, four, one, five", if that helps) is a sequence of chords that's been applied for several decades. You will recall it from such classics as "Don't Stop Believin'" and "Africa", which either you love or I will kill you.

However, during the '90s, songwriters seemed to start to speculate in this very chord sequence. Across pop and alternative rock (was there any other kind of rock in the '90s?), the vi–IV–I–V progression became embedded in our collective subconscious through tunes like "Save Tonight" (Eagle-Eye Cherry), "One of Us" (Joan Osborne), "Self-Esteem" (The Offspring), "Building a Mystery" (Sarah McLachlan), and "Zombie" (The Cranberries).

In a 2008 article, Boston columnist Marc Hirsch dubbed it "The Sensitive Female Chord Progression", because…

[W]hen I first noticed it in 1998 (when I became keenly aware that Sarah McLachlan's "Building a Mystery" sounded an awful lot like Joan Osborne's "One of Us"), it seemed to be the exclusive province of Lilith Fair types baring their souls for all to see. Think Jewel's "Hands." Melissa Etheridge's "Angels Would Fall." Nina Gordon's "Tonight and the Rest of My Life."

Indeed, Hirsch had discovered that by 2008, that fucking series of chords was all over the place. And indeed, since the '90s, both Offspring and Red Hot Chili Peppers, running out of ideas, have used it at least three times each, just like it's been discovered and harnessed by both downright reprehensible mass culture prostitutes as well as just plain over-hyped pop artists. – I'm just gonna say Justin Bieber, Avril Lavigne, Linkin Park, Nicki Minaj, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, and Kelly Clarkson; you can have fun categorizing them accordingly. Or not.

If nothing else, you will probably be familiar with The Axis of Awesome's multi-compound song satire on the progression and its variations – Hell, I've linked to that one several times. The point being, not only have we damn well heard those four fucking chords by now; it's become such a predictable pop trope that today, you'd have to get extra creative to not make any seasoned music listener immediately notice it and go, "Oh Jesus, THOSE four chords again?!"

Reddit user ferniecanto sums up the current state of the vi–IV–I–V progression spot-on:

That chord progression is the hallmark of what I call the "zero effort songwriting progress": when you want to make a hit song but you don't care whether it expresses anything or does anything interesting, you play those chords on a loop, improvise some monotone melody on it, start the chorus with a catch phrase, and bam, […] the corporate assembly line has churned out another "hit".

… And here's where we go back to our Ghost review for the exciting, connective conclusion. Because not only does Tobias Forge apply this chord progression in that one aforementioned song on this album; he does it THREE times in total. I even had an AI analyze it just to make sure, and waddyaknow, I was right as always.

Being a seasoned songwriter, however, Forge does know how to win over a seasoned listener and make that damn chord progression work as it should. He does this in ballad "Guiding Lights" where it carries a melody so tender and delicate that you'd wanna protect it from all evil. And here, it's flanked by a huge, somber verse with tonally deeper vocal phrasings, making for an atmospheric dynamism and tension-release that, to reiterate, just plain works.

This whole speculation in versatility could be said to be one of the band's primary strengths, and many a fan would probably concur with this notion. However, it has also endued Forge with the convenient stratagem to simply turn up that pop dial at his discretion.

Then, as on other Ghost albums, you have more eclectic stuff like "Cenotaph" whose uptempo shuffle and "Children of the Grave"-based guitar figure make for welcome variation and an curious little combination with the synth and the Major-key melody. However, it is curious as much as infectious. It's not bad, and you'll remember the sound and expression; it's just not as interesting as it's often presented by people who presumably got into Ghost before discovering artists like Toto and Sting – artists whose versatility seem to happen effortlessly rather than by deliberate application.

The draggingly lazy hard rock of "Missilia Amori" reminds me of one of those Van Halen songs that you skip, and then comes a C-part that's pure '80s juice. Again: An interesting little juxtaposition, but it inevitably seems like speculation rather than inspiration.

The third time Forge falls back on the vi–IV–I–V progression is in "Umbra". And whereas by aforementioned "Guiding Lights", it made me throw up my hands in emotional engagement, I now throw up my hands in disbelief. Just like with many other tracks here, it has a cool combination of elements – this time a rad Minor-key riff over a cowbell-based drum groove, and a Hammond solo. But again, it all feels very actively assembled, and especially with those FUCKING four chords I do not exactly feel compelled to revisit a lot here.

As I rate "Skeleta" 4/6, then, it is, along with "Guiding Lights", due to two things:

  1. My respect for the main character's inarguable prowess as a songsmith: He may not exactly manage to mesmerize me, but for someone who's suddenly got that big of a boner for that hackneyed chord progression, he does know his way around the Big Bag of Songwriting Devices like a pro.
  2. Closing power ballad "Excelsis".

Yes, in all its semi-cliché'd ponderings upon our mortality, that one song achieves to unite "Wind of Change"-sized pathos with a human touch that's as ingenuous as it's sincere:

"There is still time for deliverance
There is still time to make peace with your friends
And to return to where there's a chance
There is still time to love once again"

And as Forge ends the record á capella by stating, "This is the end of the avenue / I am afraid of eternity too", we have at last reached exactly that raw, vulnerable relatability that I've been missing the whole time, so well hidden under all those layers of gimmicks – musical as well as extratextual.

The fans will probably like the whole thing, and that's entirely cool. Personally, I'd like to hear Ghost following that more candid, human expression that they finally end up achieving here. Well, either that or going back to the more old-school heavy metal of their beginnings.

Sources / further reading:

Rating: 4 out of 6

Genre: Rock / pop rock / hard rock
Release date: 25/4/2025
Label: Loma Vista
Producer: Tobias Forge, but apparently calling himself "Gene Walker"for some weird reason.

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