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Ghost & Deafheaven on tour, played The Wiltern in LA (review)

Swedish occult-metal band/theater troupe Ghost brought their big Popestar tour to Los Angeles last week, playing two sold-out shows with Deafheaven at The Wiltern on October 20/21. I was there for the second night of the spectacle, which contained far more children and people in costumes than I had anticipated, and really was something to behold.

When Deafheaven opened things up, the large venue was already pretty well full. This was my 4th go-round with Deafheaven, one of my current favorite live bands. They ripped through their set with the fury, precision, and emotion that they always bring, and it was cool to see them play to such a big crowd. But some of the intimacy that can make their shows so special was of course lost in such a big space. The overwhelming, enveloping nature of their sound a bit harder to get lost in.

While the room wasn’t entirely suited to Deafheaven (and again, they were very good), Ghost’s set is precision-engineered to play beautifully in that kind of setting. Ever since their first album (still their best), Ghost have been building up to this kind of live spectacle. I hadn’t seen them since the Opus Eponymous days, and that show, like that album, registered as fun and theatrical but ultimately low-stakes. It’s just that the grooves were great. Now, while I’d argue that their songwriting may have suffered a bit over the years, they are unquestionably the live band that they’ve always been aiming to be; a huge one.

Ghost have a giant cult following, and they were out in full force in LA; again, I certainly wasn’t expecting so many small children wearing masks. And they play to that crowd masterfully. They pulled out all the stops at this show: pyrotechnics, confetti, giant stage decorations, costume changes, elaborate light shows, whatever you need. When frontman Papa Emeritus walks onstage as only a silhouette on a black stage, I was like “Oh. I get it now.” They always have been a primarily theatrical act–here, it felt like they really had the catalogue, the following, and the budget to pull that theatricality off to the fullest extent, to the extent that they must have imagined it when they started out. It was a really good, large-scale time.

And while I, again, am one of those who prefers the first album to everything else, the newer stuff really does play really well in a live setting. Go figure, the ’80s-inflected arena rock inclinations of “Mummy Dust” or “Secular Haze” really do seem designed to be played live. Songs like “From the Pinnacle to the Pit,” “He Is,” “Year Zero,” “Square Hammer,” and “Cirice” were really highlights of the show, played with a showmanship that is frankly rare among bands of any genre. Ghost are fascinating in the way their type of heavy cultural capital has shifted over the years. Opus Eponymous was so spot-on in its Sabbath/BOC/Purple fetishism that underground metal-heads adopted it as their own. But Ghost aren’t, and have never been, interested in being a small, hip band, which has spurred both a backlash against them and their growth as a band into something unique and, well, awesome. They want to paint their technicolor, tongue-in-cheek Satanism on the broadest canvas they can, and they’re getting better and better at it.

Ghost’s tour makes its way to NYC for a show at Kings Theatre on November 12 with Marissa Nadler. Tickets for that are still on sale. Check out some pictures and video from the LA show below.

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