GHOST mastermind Tobias Forge told Metal Hammer about “Peacefield”: “Because the record is going to slalom into darker subjects, I wanted to set a tone of hope in the beginning. I wanted to add a hand to the listener: ‘It will all be fine, but we’re gonna go sideways now and go on a little trip.'”

In a recent interview with Brent Porche of Philadelphia’s 93.3 WMMR radio station, Forge stated about “Skeletá”: “It is a record that is introspective to a further degree, I guess, than especially the previous record (2022’s ‘Impera’). Just to be clear, I do believe that most artists usually create a new record based on where they were on the previous one — not as a counter-reaction, but usually there’s something that you wish to achieve that you maybe didn’t on the previous one or you wanna change something or just fill your… At the end of the day, what you’re doing is basically you’re filling your repertoire with hopefully songs that you didn’t have before. But thematically, I usually have some sort of thematic guideline when I write, first and foremost for myself in order to make sense of what the new record is so it’s not too whimsically just about everything at the same time. But where ‘Impera’ was very much not only extroverted, but exteriorly reflecting on bigger society, social issues, and also, as the title implies, imperial structure and its ultimate demise, it didn’t feel very productive to continue down that and make an ‘Impera 2’, talking about the continual demise of… I was more attracted to the idea of this this record that was more shining a light in inside and making a record about healing aspects of being essentially a human being in whatever structural design, because at the end of the day, most humans are surprisingly alike and display the same abilities to sentiments. And these sentiments are usually quite basic. And that idea was attractive to me — making a record that had a song about hope, had a song about hate, had a song about love, acceptance and all these things.”

In a recent interview with Audacy, Forge addressed the band’s announcement last fall that GHOST‘s 2025 world tour would be “a phone-free experience”, with guests maintaining possession of their phones at all times, secured in Yondr pouches. He said: “It’s an experiment. And to be perfectly honest, my 16-year-old daughter was very, very, very, very skeptical of this idea. And then she was, like, ‘No one’s gonna buy a ticket.’ And I was, like, ‘I don’t know. I have no idea what people will do.’ I just know one thing, and that is that over the years it’s gone absolutely insane. If you have 10,000 people at a concert and 8,000 of them are holding a phone, there’s something deeply disconnected. And, obviously, this implies that I had this conversation with my daughter, but we talk about a lot of things and we speak openly about things. But I was saying, like, ‘That’s like having an intimate moment with someone and that person would just take out the phone like that.’ ‘Oh, hold on. I’m just gonna take a photo.’ I know some people do that.

“If I’m just speaking for myself — I know a lot of artists don’t care and I know that there are plenty of upsides, especially commercially because you want people that… The whole thing in the business is, basically, ‘Yeah, we want people to film because we want people to see the show, and that will sell more tickets.’ Fine. I understand that there’s a promotional tool with social media. I’m not gonna neglect that. Part of our success is obviously from social media… We started on MySpace. That was the root cause for our success at the time. I don’t know if we would ever become anything if it weren’t for MySpace. And, obviously, our TikTok has played a huge part.

“I’m not saying that all social media is bad,” he clarified. “I’m just saying that when it comes to the actual live show, my calling, my reason for being there is the connection between myself and everybody that I brought with me that are working in tandem to give you an experience, that experience is completely decocked if everybody’s just filming. Am I wrong? Am I right? I don’t know. That’s how I, and we, felt.”

Forge went on to reference the fact that GHOST‘s feature film debut “Rite Here Rite Now” was filmed over two nights in September 2023 at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles. The two concerts were device-free experiences; use of phones and smart watches was not permitted in the performance space. Upon arrival at the venue, devices were secured in individual Yondr pouches that were opened at the end of the event.

Tobias said: “This is where we put some practice into the theory. Some of the best shows we’ve ever done in modern time was — I mean, as far as how it felt for us, what the vibe was — was when we played in L.A., when we recorded ‘Rite Here Rite Now’. We were all taken by the fact that people were there. The crowd was there. We have never seen people like that. That was, like, 10 years ago when you saw people engaging. And I get goosebumps when I think about that. And I was, like, ‘Fuck, I wanna do that every night. I want everyone to feel like this,’ because I know — and this is the conversation I had with my daughter. It’s, like, ‘I understand that you in theory think that this is like a downside, like a bad thing.’ I want people to experience this. It’s just two hours of your life. Come on. If you hate it, okay. We all felt so good when we were in L.A., and I know a lot of people said the same thing. It was a great feeling. Fans were saying afterwards, like, ‘I was allowed to just sing along and just act… I could do whatever I want. I don’t have to worry about someone filming me or…’ I mean, I’m not gonna place all the words in everybody’s mouths here, but it’s a great feeling, and I wanna recreate that.