"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