Speaking with Riff X‘s “Metal XS,” GHOST‘s Tobias Forge again addressed the band’s 2025 world tour’s “phone-free experience,” where attendees keep their phones secured in Yondr pouches.
“Simply put, over the last — I don’t know — five years, whatever, every year has become more and more and ever-growing distance I felt between the crowd and the band, or the band and myself,” Tobias said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “I’ll talk about myself. I felt that I have a problem with watching someone [in the audience holding up a phone in front of their face]. It’s irritating. And maybe I’m old school, maybe I’m old fashioned. I just feel that we’re having an intimate moment, and it disturbs me that you’re filming while we’re doing this together. I’m doing something for you to respond to me. And when we did the shows in L.A., I, together with everyone on stage, was amazed how great it felt and how we wish that it was like this every night, because it made us better. It felt like they were having a better time. And I just felt that I have a hard time not having experienced this.
“I cannot neglect that I just had an experience saying that this is so much better. And then we did a little bit of a obligatory rounds, when we sort of speak to people: ‘How did you feel? What was your impression?’ And the overall result that came back was that it was an amazing experience. A lot of people were saying what people are now talking about: how will it feel? Beforehand, you go into it thinking that it might be uncomfortable. ‘What am I gonna do with my hands?’ I stopped smoking once. I smoked for 17 years. I couldn’t even fathom the idea of going out drinking a beer [and not having a smoke]. Obviously, I’m not selling you the ideas of either smoking or drinking beer, but I started drinking beer and smoking at a very early age. That’s why I’m not very tall. So when I was in my twenties, I couldn’t even imagine not smoking, because I’d never drunk a beer without smoking, so I couldn’t fathom where to put my hands if I’m gonna drink a beer. That worked really good. I stopped smoking in 2012. No problem. Long story, long segue to that is that people were afraid, people were worried about the concept of not being able to film or being able to access the world. As soon as they’d done it, they felt so much better, and that is what I want everyone to feel. For two hours, you feel relieved of the chains that is the ether, whatever it is.
“Then you can call, then you can take photos and then you can do all those things. By all means, tell everyone how awful it was. But I felt that I wanted to do it this way, because it made me, and it made the band and it made all the people that I spoke to, at least from the L.A. shows, feel so much better. And that is the collective joy that I want people to associate GHOST with. That’s the show now.”
Fans attending GHOST‘s Birmingham show on April 20th, part of their ‘phone-free experience’ tour, reportedly endured considerable entry delays. Local sources suggest waits stretched to 40 minutes or more, leading to widespread speculation among attendees that the extended queues were a consequence of the new security measures. These measures mandate that all smartphones be secured in Yondr pouches for the duration of the event.
Ahead of the show, numerous fans turned to X (formerly Twitter) to share their frustration over the long, winding queues outside the venue. According to BirminghamLive, the lines stretched from the Utilita Arena toward the Library of Birmingham and even extended in the opposite direction along the canal, as attendees waited for their bags to be checked.
GHOST is set to release their new album, Skeletá, on April 25 through Loma Vista Recordings.
Reeder, the visionary behind Metal Addicts, has transformed his lifelong passion for metal into a thriving online community for metal aficionados. As a fervent devotee of black metal, Reeder is captivated by its dark, atmospheric, and often unorthodox soundscapes.