Tobias Forge further elaborates on Ghost’s phone policy at their shows

Ghost creator Tobias Forge was asked by presenter Chuck Armstrong if he is “getting tired” of defending the band’s current global tour’s no-phones policy during an appearance on the October 14th episode of Loudwire Nights. When attending Ghost‘s “Skeletour” performances, fans are required to put their phones in what is known as a Yondr pouch. After that, the bag is magnetically sealed, and fans who want to open it must go to the venue employees outside the main auditorium. He responded this, as reported by blabbermouth.net.

I think that not a whole lot of people have understood what the meaning is and how it makes them feel and how it makes us all feel better. And [there are] a few exceptions here and there, people who just somehow have a problem with it, but overall I think that… Yeah, I think that the show is great, but I think that the show is definitely enhanced by this fact, because people see a show for the first time in 10 years, whereas they’ve sort of not, for the last five, 10 years. So it’s a little bit of a trick. But no, I can talk myself slack-jawed about why I think this is a great thing. And I believe that more bands will start doing this.

Ghost is one of the few bands enforcing this policy.

I think that just right now, it’s just an economic disincentive, if that makes sense. But the negative here, when bands contemplate using this, is just the cost, because it’s a cost. And as of right now, it’s an infrastructure that you have to carry as an artist. And I think that hopefully more artists will start using this so there will be this incentive for local halls, promoters, all these buildings… They have, obviously, five hundred to a thousand chairs that they can put out on the rink ice, and they have a little stage, if a band comes, and they should have this function. And I’m sure if that was something that you can just cross a box in order to get locally, a whole lot more artists would do it.

Forge also commented on the fact that the final two shows of this year’s “Skeletour” were filmed for future release. The band’s two shows at the 20,000-seat Palacio De Los Deportes on September 24 and 25 were captured on 16mm film “for the rest of the world to see at some point” after Ghost‘s September 23 concert in Mexico City was postponed because Tobias had food poisoning.

We did film it with old-fashioned reel, film roll, which, in turn, obviously you have to process them and you have to put together an edit, which is time consuming. Right now we’re currently in a sort of a little break, and even though I’m doing other things as well, we’re gonna start looking at the edit. But once you start to piece together the actual order of clips, basically, there’s this whole slew of production that needs to be done in order for it just to look normal. So, what I learned with the process of making ‘Rite Here Rite Now’ was that it takes a lot longer than you think. We ended up fluffing the filming slightly because originally we had three nights in Mexico and one fell through, which essentially meant that we lost 33% of the material that we hoped to get, which, obviously, it was a great shame that the show didn’t happen, but for us, since the film project, it was very, very annoying that we lost a third of the shoot. So once we put together an edit towards the end of the year, something like that, we’re gonna try to watch the whole thing as objectively as we can and then try to figure out, like, do we need something else in it? Because, to me, it’s very important that we don’t end up making ‘Rite Here Rite Now 2’. It’s another film and it’s not the same thing. It’s not an extension of that. It’s a different thing. So I need to be wary of how do we make this feel different yet capturing, obviously, the show and the tour and what people saw or didn’t see. But anyway, we’re doing stuff in 2026 as well. So, I’m assuming, and I’m gonna be realistic saying that [it will] probably [be released in] ’27.