Ghost front man Tobias Forge, better known as the many incarnations of Papa Emeritus, recently sat down with Revolver and Metal Hammer to discuss the band’s upcoming album. He revealed to Revolver that they are currently mixing their fourth studio album with Andy Wallace, and said this about the lyrical direction, “It is loosely themed around the concept of death and doom. It’s a themed album around medieval times, but it’s definitely clinging onto a lot of very current things. The Black Death [plague] is a great example of a turning point for a whole civilization. Complete villages were annihilated. Most people knew very little, so all of it was God or the Devil — and about their faith being questioned: Why are we being stricken down by this great scourge? It must be because of our not fearing God enough and all this superstitious bullshit. There’s a lot that you would recognize today in online mannerisms. In many ways, we’ve gone back a few steps 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.”

He also told Metal Hammer this, “It’s a very bright sounding record. And it’s a very heavy record, I’d say, but not from a Metal Hammer point of view, meaning all metal through-and-through. But it’s a heavy record with a heavy theme. I think the overall ambience is very serious. It’s going to be out when it’s getting hot! It will be out sometime in the spring or summer. That would be my guess.”

Stay tuned for more details from the clergy soon!