At the beginning of December, there's nothing that me and the Mrs like more than to pop down to England's south coast to take in a bit of sea air, indulge in a spot of Christmas shopping and then nip into Southampton's glorious Guildhall to worship at the altar of the finest Occult Rock band ever to walk the Dark Lord's earth - Sweden's mighty Ghost.

I'd be pushing it to say I'd seen Ghost before. I stood well outside a jam packed tent at this year's Hellfest and heard their demonically dulcet tones, which thrilled me to the bone, but had no chance of even catching a glimpse of them, such was their pulling power. Their debut album 'Opus Eponymous' has rarely left my turntable since (coloured vinyl of course), and certainly gets my vote for album of 2011 (Jim it was released in 2010 fella - URHQ), so tonight was a bit of a pilgrimage to pay our respects to these wonderful entertainers of evil.

Ghost are part of this year's 'Defenders Of The Faith' package, third on the bill, sandwiched between kiddie metallers Rise To Remain and fellow Swedes In Flames, and certainly the odd ones out of the five bands appearing (the other two being Insense and headliners Trivium). Apologies to the other bands, but this was a flying visit and all about Ghost for us, with the others bands providing very little in the way of musical interest. If Ghost were the odd ones out on the bill, to be honest we were the odd ones out in the audience, as half of them looked like they weren't old enough to get served at the bar, and we must have looked like we'd turned up too early to pick the kids up! It was like gate crashing a metal crèche.

Still, there were a whole lot of fresh young souls ripe for the picking of Satan's claw as Ghost hit the stage, and we were so excited about finally seeing Ghost that we were acting like a couple of fifteen year olds anyway. This was just as well, because aside from one brave soul standing near us at the front, most of the others surrounding us stood motionless, not quite sure what to make of what they were witnessing. If you're a fifteen year old metal head, you want a drum kit to be huge, with twin bass drums a minimum requirement. Ghost's drummer plays the smallest kit you've ever seen. There's also the small matter of five of the band dressed as faceless monks, and a frontman dressed as the Pope from hell with the ugliest made up face we've seen since Alice Cooper last chewed on a wasp. Opening track 'Con Clavi Con Dio' also starts with the immortal line "Lucifer we are here, for your grace, evil one." It was like some of the audience were watching 'The Exorcist' for the first time!

What follows is half an hour of pure heaven (or is that hell?) for us as Ghost steam though a majestic set of 'Elizabeth', 'Prime Mover', 'Death Knell', 'Stand By Him' and the classic 'Ritual' to close. The band look fantastic, and this is modern rock theatre at its very best. Frontman Papa Emeritus, despite the ghoulish appearance, actually comes across as a loveable rogue whilst the complete anonymity of the rest of the band underneath those robes adds to the spectacle - visually stunning and a great gimmick. It's certainly not a gimmick to detract from any weakness in the music though, which is superb and built on top quality song writing. What differentiates this band from your usual Scandinavian Satan worshippers who might have an indecipherable spiky logo, white face paint and a lead singer who sounds like a cat being sick, is that they are actually an incredibly melodic classic rock band, sounding a lot closer to Blue Oyster Cult than Venom.

Whether it was a wise move to put the band on this tour of teenybop metal I'm not so sure - there was a good response from a fair proportion of the audience, but bewilderment from the rest. Ghost are a completely different band to the likes of Rise To Remain, In Flames and Trivium, but a few new souls would have been converted to Lucifer's cause tonight. I may jest about the Satanic connections here, and of course it's all just pantomime, and a damned good one at that, a hell of a lot better than Peter Pan that's for sure! It was a very brief set from Ghost, as it would be on a package like this, but it was one of best half hours of live music I've seen this year, and a pilgrimage I had to make. As it turned out, we could have seen it in London if we'd known Ace Frehley was going to pull a sickie, but there you go. Southampton Guild Hall is a great venue anyway. For me, Ghost have produced the song of the year ('Ritual'), album of the year ('Opus Eponymous'), and have to be my band of the year. And with that, we left the youngsters to their Fisher Price metal, and headed off into the dark, dark night...