Europe was in this turmoil in the late 1340s. The plague is extremely fast. It starts off as the worst flu you’ve ever had and then it just goes worse and then you’re dead after three days. So people were lying in the streets — corpses and all the surroundings were just falling apart. All the brothels and pubs were thriving because people started partying literally like there was no tomorrow because they were gonna die. They were just going for it. “Dance Macabre” is capturing that joyous nocturnal sort of life in a disco song. [Laughs]

—Tobias Forge, Revolver Magazine

I had the riff that starts the whole song, that was just a riff that got stuck in my head. I didn’t think of it as a Ghost thing at first. Because I heard the riff in a slightly more “synth-y” sort of way. But I showed it to some songwriting pals of mine and they were like, “That’s a Ghost song!” Oh, okay. I didn’t hear it that way at first. But it then it was, “Let’s make a Ghost song out of it…”

—Tobias Forge, Guitar World