Ghost returned to late-night TV on Wednesday (July 23), playing Lachryma on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
The performance, filmed live at New York’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza, took place the day after Tobias Forge’s masked devil church headlined the famous Madison Square Garden arena. It was the band’s first time on US national TV since 2015, when they performed Cirice on a Halloween edition of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
Watch the footage below.
Lachryma is taken from Ghost’s new album Skeletá and was released as a single in April.
In an exclusive Hammer interview earlier this year, Forge, who co-founded Ghost in 2006 and performs as frontman ‘Papa V Perpetua’, said of the song: “It opens with more of a riffage, and I guess now comes off as somewhat of a ‘typical’ Ghost mash-up, where it’s heavy on one end and met with a big, bombastic chorus. That’s a song about self-deceit.”
At the MSG show on Tuesday (July 22), Ghost dedicated their performance to Ozzy Osbourne, whose death at the age of 76 was confirmed shortly before they took the stage.
Forge told the audience in attendance: “We’re going to dedicate tonight’s show to the memory of the life and laughter of Ozzy Osbourne. For being the prince of darkness, he sure gave us a lot of light so we’re gonna tap into that tonight and carry it forward through a time of darkness.”
Forge performed at Osbourne’s blockbuster retirement show, Back To The Beginning, on July 5. He did vocals on a cover of Bark At The Moon, performing as part of a ‘supergroup’ with Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker, guitarists Vernon Reid (Living Colour) and Nuno Bettencourt, former Ozzy bassist Rudy Sarzo and former Ozzy keyboardist Adam Wakeman.
The North American leg of Ghost’s Skeletour will continue at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Michigan tonight (July 24). The shows on the tour are ‘phone-free’, with attendees needing to keep their mobile phones in sealed bags on their person.
