Watch Ghost play Genesis' Jesus He Knows Me live for the first time

This weekend, Ghost performed their cover of Genesis' Jesus He Knows Me for the first time on stage.

The performance took place on May 21 on the opening night of their 2023 tour at Zénith in Rouen, France.

The Swedish occult party-rockers shared the TV evangelist-slating track as a single on Easter Sunday (April 9) last month, as featured on their newly-released covers EP Phantomime.

As well as Jesus He Knows Me, Ghost additionally debuted Respite On The Spitalfields for the first time, lifted from 2022's chart-topping album Impera, which was played as the last song.

Other tunes included in the 20-track set were show openers Kaisarion and Rats, followed by Faith, Spillways, Cirice, Hunter's Moon, and Mary On A Cross, among others.

Speaking of the covering the Genesis track while in conversation with France's FIP Metal, frontman Tobias Forge explains: "Jesus He Knows Me, the original, is obviously very uptempo, but it sounds like they're playing it with flower sticks — very, very soft.

"And most of the things that I made my version of, or our version of, most of the things, the components are in the original song, but they're just played in a very, very subdued sort of [way]… That was the guiding light throughout the recording — just to make it as energetic possible."

Ghost are currently in the midst of their tour across Europe in support of 2022's Impera. From August 2, they'll then venture on their Re-Imperatour US tour with Amon Amarth as special guests.

Watch the performance and check out the full setlist below:

Ghost setlist 21/05/23:

1. Kaisarion
2. Rats
3. Faith
4. Spillways
5. Cirice
6. Hunter's Moon
7. Jesus He Knows Me (GENESIS cover) (live debut)
8. Ritual
9. Call Me Little Sunshine
10. Con Clavi Con Dio
11. Watcher In The Sky
12. Year Zero
13. He Is
14. Miasma
15. Mary On A Cross
16. Mummy Dust
17. Respite On The Spitalfields (live debut)

Discussing the Phantomime EP with NME back in April, Forge revealed that the project would “cast a glimpse as to where I want to go with the band now”.

He added: “That doesn’t mean that all of a sudden we’re going to sound like Television! It just means that there are practical things in there that have inspired me to record this EP in a slightly different way than I have done previously.”

Although the covers chosen for the EP may seem somewhat "dated", the frontman notes how the political shift back to “Mediaeval times” in the West is what swayed his creative choices. “All that stuff, it felt dated a few years ago" he explains. "Whereas now, everything that we’re singing about on this song, everything that this song is about is actually right back up beside what I’m writing about in my own material.

“What I’m writing about is a completely contemporary commentary on basically a movement within the free Western world who wants to flatten the Earth. This movement wants to regress the world, and just completely turn the clock back to Mediaeval times. I don’t know what that’s about, it’s just stupidity!”