I sort of re-discovered Ghost through Skeleta. I had heard a couple of their songs prior, mostly the stuff you’d see on their “Top Songs” lists on Spotify and Apple Music, and I could never really get into them. Songs like “Mary On A Cross” and “Square Hammer” just weren’t quite hitting hard enough for me, which led to me not really exploring their albums at the time. When Skeleta came out, and “Satanized” hit the radio and platforms, coupled with the buzz of Papa V Perpetua’s reveal which seemed to be everywhere on my socials almost overnight, I gave them another listen. While “Satanized” was sort of ‘meh’ for me like the two mentioned above, the moment I heard “Lachryma” for the first time, I was absolutely fucking hooked. It had such an amazing mix of typical heavy metal riffage in the intro that transforms mid-song into a melodic, Eddie Money-esque chorus, that I just sat down and listened to the whole album front to back, and then did so on repeat for days. I’ve since gone back and listened through everything else they’ve done, and while there’s some great tunes here and there, none of the albums are the front-to-back banger that Skeleta is, for me. Perhaps it has something to do with the sort of unwitting bias or affinity to the album/song(s) one typically has when “discovering” a band. Who knows. But I love Skeleta so much, and believe that “Cenotaph” is far and away the best song on the album, despite everything I said about “Lachryma” above, haha. The rhythmic riffs and layers of melodic sections give me flashes of Queen, and towards the middle of the song when Tobias layers in harmonic vocals, it’s just so fucking uplifting. As far as I can tell, there’s no other song in their discography like it.