More details revealed about Ghost’s concert policy without smartphones

On March 5, Tobias Forge appeared on Loudwire Nights to promote Ghost‘s new song, “Satanized,” which is taken from their upcoming album “Skeletá.” He had a lot to say on Ghost‘s “no phones” policy for their impending Skeletour World Tour, but not much more about “Satanized” than that.

We want [fans] to be there in the moment. I can speak for myself but I think there was a lot of reflection that came in as we had done the L.A. shows where we recorded [Rite Here Rite Now]. Because of the nature of filming, we decided to do the Yondr pouches then. The first thing that hit us, the first night we came off stage, was the crowd was phenomenal. We came off the first night and were just blown away that these people were so engaged. The face value of not seeing phones was literally like time travel. I’m not talking about like back to the ’80s, I’m talking about maybe 10 years back in time when people were generally not filming as much, whereas now in modern times it’s just ridiculous. If you’re playing in front of 10,000 people, 8,000 people are holding a phone. I wish it was like this all the time. There is something intuitive about having fun together in a group, being there … I really think, hope and believe that people will find this slightly more enjoyable not than every show you’ve seen, but more enjoyable than standing in the back, seeing 1,000 screens and the band in the back.

According to Forge, performing in a place like Los Angeles can be challenging because there are numerous live music options available to the audience every night. He made it apparent that he wasn’t referring about every fan in the audience, but generally speaking, people can be difficult to relate to. But when they took phones out of the “Rite Here Rite Now” equation, he and the rest of Ghost saw a big difference.