GHOST grabs the #1 slot on the Billboard 200 albums chart for the first time, reports Keith Caulfield of Billboard.com. The Swedish Hard Rock band’s new studio effort, “Skeletá”, debuts atop the tally (dated May 10th) with 86,000 equivalent album units earned in the United States in the week ending May 1, according to Luminate. Of the album’s starting sum, 89% was driven by traditional album sales — buoyed by a big vinyl sales figure.

“Skeletá” marks the ninth charted effort for GHOST on the Billboard 200. The band first visited the list in 2013 with its second album, “Infestissumam”, which also marked the act’s first top 40-charting set, reaching #28. “Skeletá” scores GHOST its eighth top 40 set, and fifth to reach the top 10. The band had previously gone as high as #2 with its last full-length studio album, 2022’s Impera.

Furthermore, “Skeletá” is the first Hard Rock album to lead the Billboard 200 in over four years, and the only Rock, Hard Rock or Alternative album to be #1 in 2025. The last Hard Rock album at #1 was AC/DC’s “Power Up”, which premiered at #1 on the November 28, 2020, chart and spent one week at #1.

The genesis of “Skeletá” is rooted in the wake of a world-spanning years-long touring campaign in support of “Impera” — a period that saw Impera top album charts the world over and winning an American Music Award and an iHeart Radio Music Award, as well as the band earning its first RIAA-certified platinum single (“Mary On A Cross”) and presiding over the highest grossing hard rock cinema event in North American history (its feature film debut “Rite Here Rite Now”). As this sustained maelstrom ultimately wound down, GHOST mastermind Tobias Forge’s next uncharted creative direction would prove to be an inward journey. This deeply introspective turn in Forge’s creative process would ultimately result in “Skeletá”: a collection of 10 new songs originating from and cutting as close to the bone as (in)humanly possible.

GHOST’s sixth psalm, “Skeletá”, is its most unflinchingly introspective work to date. Where previous GHOST albums dealt largely with chronicling and/or observing outward facing subject matter — such as Impera’s meditations on the rise and fall of empires and its predecessor Prequelle’s evocations of the ravages of era-defining plagues — Skeletá’s lyrics render the distinct individual emotional vistas of each of its 10 songs in one-on-one fashion, at times as if in a dialogue with oneself in a mirror. The end result is a singular collection of timeless, universal sentiments, all filtered through a prism of a uniquely personal point of view.

“Skeletá” will be brought to life over the course of Ghost’s Skeletour World Tour 2025. The most ambitious incarnation of the GHOSTt live ritual to date, Skeletour World Tour 2025 recently revealed a first wave of more than 55 dates — including a historic first-ever headlining show at New York’s hallowed Madison Square Garden — with more to be announced. With tickets already selling at a brisk pace, the Skeletour World Tour 2025 ritual experience promises to expand the GHOST community to attract its largest and most diverse audiences to date. From lifelong disciples to the curious uninitiated first-timers to the outcasts and others who find solace in the ritual, all are welcome to escape the travails of daily life and to become one with the phantasmagoric spectacle that is GHOST live in concert.

“Skeletá” tracklist:

1. Peacefield
2. Lachryma
3. Satanized
4. Guiding Lights
5. De Profundis Borealis
6. Cenotaph
7. Missilia Amori
8. Marks of the Evil One
9. Umbra
10. Excelsis

“Peacefield” video: