Tommy's Atlanta Ghost Review
We live in Greenville, SC. We were very much looking forward to this show since they (venue/city) totally fucked us over in Simpsonville, SC 2 years ago for Ghost/Amon Amarth. But that's another story. Anyway...
Got officially on the road at about 11am to go 140 miles for an 8pm show. Why? Oh, because Atlanta traffic absolutely sucks. Thought we were making good time until the map says 90 minutes to go the last 42 miles. Huh? How does that work? Oh, it works. Very accurate.
Was our almost 15 year old's first concert. He also plays the drums and percussion in school. We get to Downtown Atlanta and there's your usual homeless, crackheads, etc. We get to the hotel around 2 and the kid is pretty quiet.
'What's wrong, dude?'
'Nothing'.
'Nah, what's up?'
'I don't like Atlanta.'
Lol! Smart kid.
We get settled into the hotel, order some Chick-Fil-A and relax for a bit before getting ready. Wife got us the living room/bedroom combo suite so that was cool. Kid enjoyed that.
We leave the hotel to walk the 5 minutes to State Farm Arena at about 5:00 for 6:30 doors. Someone from San Francisco must have been in town because we had to dodge literal human shit on the sidewalk on the way.
We get in line, maybe 40 people in front of us at the gate we arrived at and it grew behind us pretty quickly after. There was a small little shop right there with Ghost merch so me and her took turns running in real quick to grab a tour shirt.
Beyonce was also playing the Mercedes-Benz Stadium right next door, same night. The Beyonce fans had to walk past the arena to get to the stadium and the looks were hilarious. I specifically remember 2 girls walking by and looking at the Ghost crowd and the one girl says to the other 'What IS it?'. Lol! 90% of the girls were dressed in cowboy hats and short shorts although a majority should not have been. I try not to be judgey, but read the room...or the scale.
Time to go inside and check those phones. So for anyone who hasn't done it, they scan your Ticketmaster app and a paper receipt comes out with your seat numbers and section. Then you turn around and there's a table with the Yondr employees. They put your phone in one of their bags with a lanyard, lock it, and hand it back to you. Then the metal detector/magic wand and you're in.
Concourse buzzing. We go find our seats to get acquainted witjbwhere werw at and grab some food for the kid and a High Noon apiece for us gluten allergy Gen X'ers. Probably settled in about 7:20. Ghost crowd is friendly as hell (lol). No phones so people had to, ya know, talk to each other and people watch like old times.
Doesn't seem too full at first but in the last 10-15 before lights go down it fills up to what looks like a pretty packed house from our seats (sec 110).
Lights go out. They open with Peacefield, curtain still up. There were 2 screens, one on each side that were zoomed in to Papa's face singing. Right as the song gets going BOOM! Pyro, curtain down, here we go.
Band is super tight. For all the Tobias can't sing people, well, the band has 9 people and he has 4 singing backup vocals up there with him for the live show so everything sounded great. 3 of them females. They do a LOT of guitar solos in unison. Faith might be my favorite by them and they played it, so yay me.
Guitar players' look is probably my favorite for the new album.
Looks like they're mixing up song #6 on this tour. For us it was Little Sunshine. Hell yeah!
Backdrop/curtains changed 4 times. Jesus took off in a rocket ship at one point. No phones means the crowd was engaged the whole time. Barely saw any beer or piss breaks.
For the encore all the screens were focused on fans in the crowd which I thought was very cool. Place was nuts for Square Hammer.
22 songs in 1 hour and 50 minutes. They were quicker than I remember when I saw them before but, again, Beyonce was literally next door. They (Atlanta) were probably not trying to have both get out at the same time.
Here is the setlist.
https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/ghost/20 ... 1d8ce.html
Got back to the hotel, ordered GF pizzas for us and Wing Stop for the kid. He had a good time which Ibwas haooy to see. He didnt know that encores are a thing. Free breakfast next morning can't be beat. Bacon, eggs, sausage, the works. Hotel was mostly Beyonce fans, some Ghost and some WWE as they were there the next night. Probably friends of LAGlamrocker's.
10/10 would do again. Hopefully not in Atlanta though.
New phone keyboard so forgive the spelling until I fix it. Thanks for reading.
ETA: Getting your phone unlocked and getting out wasn't too bad. 90% of the crowd was there until the end so everyone was trying to get their device unlocked. All in all? Probably 10 minutes.
When we got home we turned on AEW PPV ALL IN: Texas. Total banger. Great weekend.