Ghost B.C. at Royale Boston – May 10, 2013

Ghost B.C. is touring in support of their new album, Infestissumam. They made their way into Boston, playing at the Royale Boston nightclub.

I first saw Ghost (remember, the B.C. is silent) at Metallica’s Orion Music & More festival last year in Atlantic City. I had never heard of them before, but all weekend I was hearing a lot of talk about them. Just about anybody I spoke to was looking forward to seeing them. I decided to head over and see what all the buzz was about. When they walked out in their robes, I had my doubts. I expected them to be a very aggressive, screaming band. Not only was I surprised at how great a singer Papa Emeritus was, but I was blown away by the band in general. They’re extremely talented musicians, with an awesome, vintage sound to them.

Needless to say, I’ve been looking forward to Infestissumam and the subsequent tour.

Support on the tour came from Los Angeles based Ides of Gemini. These guys unfortunately didn’t do anything for me. The songs droned, with nothing standing one apart from the other. The singer was good, but didn’t do anything other than singing long, drawn out words.

After they finished I heard somebody in the crowd say “They should have put bags on the ground for us to take a nap, that was sleeping music!”

But Luckily, opening bands don’t last forever, and before you knew it, Ghost was taking the stage!

Setlist
Infestissumam
Per Aspera ad Inferi
Con Clavi Con Dio
Prime Mover
Elizabeth
Secular Haze
Body and Blood
Stand by Him
Death Knell
Satan Prayer
Genesis
Year Zero
Ritual
—–
Monstrance Clock

They played every track off of 2010’s Opus Eponymous, plus six tracks off last month’s Infestissumam. All the tracks were well received, although personally I could do without “Body and Blood.” It’s just a little too poppy of a song for me. I loved hearing the rest of the new stuff played live, especially “Year Zero,” which is a song I haven’t been able to stop playing since they released it.

Other highlights of the set for me were “Elizabeth,” “Stand by Him,” and of course, “Ritual.” Hopefully the next time the come around, we hear a few more songs off of Infestissumam. I would LOVE to hear “Zombie Queen” live!

They were a fun band to shoot, but photographically I had a few issues, the biggest one being there was no barricade, the crowd was right up against the stage. So unfortunately this limited my angles for shots to the corner I stationed myself in at the beginning of the night. There also wasn’t a lot of diversity in the lights, it was often just one color lighting everything, which can make for less than dramatic lighting in images. I’m happy with what I got with what was available to me, but I hope to get a better chance to shoot them in the future.

Ghost has another week of dates left in the US, then they’re back to Europe for summer festivals throughout June and July. They return for the US for Lollapalooza in Chicago in August, and then South America in September. Maybe in that gap they have in August, we’ll see them supporting another band on a US tour? Hopefully they come back around soon. If you have the opportunity to see them, do not miss it!