"In many ways, we've gone back a few steps," Ghost "director" Tobias Forge said of society at large, when we interviewed him in the studio while working on the band's highly anticipated new album Prequelle, "because now it's closer to how it was back in the old days when people were standing at the square and all of a sudden, it's like in Monty Python's Life of Brian: 'Stone him! Ra! Ra! Ra!' Public trials are very unsupervised and extremely swift and speak to the most primordial parts of us."
That primal rush to judgment and the contagiousness of beliefs are suggested in the lyrics to Prequelle lead single "Rats," which the band premiered yesterday (April 12th) on SiriusXM. "It's actually not technically about rodents," Forge told us of the song. "It's about something spreading as wildfire and completely destroying things quicker than you know. It was how the plague started in Europe. It was basically a couple of merchant ships that had been over in Crimea. A few of them sailed into the port of Messina in Sicily, and according to the legend, from the ship came rats and they were carrying the fleas that had this bubonic plague. Almost everyone on the ship was dead and dying."
Read the full lyrics below.
"Rats"
In times of turmoil
In times like these
Beliefs contagious
Spreading disease
This wretched mischief
Is now coursing through your souls
Never to let go
Never to let go
Them rats!
Into your sanctum
You let them in
Now all your loved ones
And all your kin
Will suffer punishments
Beneath the wrath of god
Never to forgive
Never to forgive
Them rats!
This devastation
Left your cities to be burnt
Never to return
Never to return
Them filthy rodents
Are are still coming for your souls
Never to let go
Never to let go
Them rats!
They're still coming after you
There is nothing you can do
