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<\/p>\nBy Christopher David<\/p>\n
Arena rock made a raucous return to form on Friday night at the Allstate Arena as one of the metal bills of the year rolled into town. Ghost, alongside co-headliners Volbeat and openers Twin Temple, unleashed their much anticipated new stage show to Chicagoland, showcasing a band that has grown in unexpected and thrilling ways even in the space of a few years.<\/p>\n
First up was Twin Temple, and while their current lineup features a full band, the unit remains the devilish love-child of guitarist Zachary James and vocalist Alexandra James, who, with her jet-black beehive and slinky velvet cape, called to mind iconic female vocalists like Ronnie Spector.\u00a0\u00a0 Known for their on-stage Satanic rituals and dedication to subverting traditional approaches to Satanism in rock and metal, Twin Temple owe more to the genre-bending pop of the 1960s, moving from classic rock n\u2019 roll progressions to tangos on songs like \u201cLet\u2019s Have a Satanic Orgy\u201d and \u201cSatan\u2019s A Woman.\u201d While Twin Temple only had time for a few tunes, let\u2019s hope they maintain that small club energy they\u2019re known for as they inevitably move into bigger and bigger venues.<\/p>\n
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Teasing the audience throughout the night with snippets of Johnny Cash\u2019s \u201cRing of Fire\u201d and Metallica\u2019s \u201cShortest Straw,\u201d Volbeat\u2019s vocalist\/guitarist Michael Poulsen led the quartet through a mish-mash of styles in their seventeen-song set, and he was clearly having a blast. Guitarist Rob Caggiano strutted the stage and offered some nice layering to tracks like \u201cThe Sacred Stones\u201d and \u201cSay No More\u201d from the band\u2019s new album Servant of the Mind<\/em>. At times, it felt like Volbeat wasn\u2019t sure who it wanted to be, and the segues from tracks like the Thin Lizzy-esque \u201cLola Montez\u201d and the bright, rockabilly stylings of \u201cDie to Live\u201d felt a bit out of sync with the band\u2019s heavier material, though the band\u2019s command of the stage speaks to their growth and continued promise amongst their fanbase.<\/p>\n But for most of the place, the night belonged to Papa, even if he wasn\u2019t around for too long. (That may have been a spoiler. Apologies.)<\/p>\n Opening with \u201cKaisarion\u201d from the forthcoming Impera<\/em>\u2014a dynamic track with bright chord changes and background vocals that called to mind elements of Queen and Iron Maiden\u2014 Ghost guru Tobias Forge and his Nameless Ghouls blazed through a fifteen-song set that highlighted just how far Ghost have come since 2011\u2019s Opus Eponymous<\/em>. Gone are the days when the enigmatic, mocking Papa Emeritus emerged in a veil of mystery and incense smoke; now, Papa is merely a character in the world Forge has built, appearing, in his fourth incarnation, for a fiery, triumphant rendition of \u201cYear Zero.\u201d (And man, oh, man, how I have waited to hear an arena crowd bellowing \u201cHail Satan!\u201d to that chorus for many years now.) Most of the set focused on a scaled back version of Cardinal Copia, the character introduced during the last album cycle (2017\u2019s Prequelle<\/em>), as Forge cycled through a number of different costume changes throughout the night, finally ending on a sequined \u2018mirror ball\u2019 jacket for the final few songs of the evening, including an impressive cover of \u201cEnter Sandman\u201d (which the band covered for Metallica\u2019s recent \u201cBlack Box\u201d project) as well as a one-two punch in lieu of a traditional encore: the danceable pop-sheen of \u201cDanse Macabre\u201d and a thunderous rendition of one of the band\u2019s strongest paeans to darkness, \u201cSquare Hammer.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo you like going to the movies?\u201d Forge asked the crowd, a wink and nod to \u201cHunter\u2019s Moon,\u201d a new track featured on Impera<\/em> and also having appeared in last fall\u2019s Halloween Kills, <\/em>though beyond that, the new material remained mostly in the dark, presumably until the band\u2019s proper Imperatour<\/em> later this year. An extended intro that allowed for some wordless banter between Ghouls led into an explosive \u201cCirice,\u201d and the momentum carried as Forge joked about \u201cMummy Dust\u201d being a ballad before the band tore the song from the ground with its moody chorus interludes and biting synths. Forge and Co. have always made a point of engaging with the audience in a humorous way as opposed to playing the characters too \u2018heavily,\u2019 though for lifers, there\u2019s no longer denying that this is, in many ways, a different band entirely from the days of Infestissumam<\/em> and Meliora,<\/em> but of course, that\u2019s to be expected. It\u2019s clear that Forge has long had the vision to bring Ghost to where it is now; their clever announcements from album to album introducing new incarnations of Papa Emeritus\u2014and finally, the more playful Cardinal Copia to bring to the band\u2019s image to a broader audience\u2014were clearly part of a masterplan. That\u2019s not a bad thing; every band in rock and metal that achieves success at the arena-packing level goes through a necessary evolution to grow their audience; so it is with Ghost. They\u2019ve earned it, and on Friday, they more than proved they deserve it as well.<\/p>\n For More On Ghost, click here<\/a><\/p>\n For Photos Of Ghost at Allstate Arena, click here<\/a><\/p>\n For More On Volbeat, click here<\/a><\/p>\n For Photos Of Volbeat at Allstate Arena, click here<\/a><\/p>\n For More On Twin Temple, click here<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Volbeat-AllState-Arena-Rosemont-02-18-22-15-1024x685.jpg\")
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