Guiding Lights

A power ballad that arrives early in 'Skeletá', 'Guiding Lights' finds Ghost at their most theatrically earnest. Tobias Forge delivers the central refrain with the kind of lighters-in-the-air conviction the song demands, whilst a soaring guitar solo cuts through the arrangement like a moment of genuine transcendence. The track channels the proggy menace and luxurious 80s indulgence that defines the album, everything rendered in Ghost's signature scale: big, loud, and dripping with gilded lore. The song dwells on spiritual searching and the seductive pull of false direction. "The road that leads to nowhere is long", Forge repeats, a mantra that builds across the track's architecture. There is a tension here between the ballad's earnestness and the knowing theatricality Ghost have perfected, yet it never tips into gluttony. A Dork four-star record, 'Skeletá' proves why Ghost remain beloved: few can balance tongue-in-cheek excess with genuine homage quite so deftly.