GHOST is a theatrical and largely tongue-in-cheek outfit. Though the band is spiritually indebted to horror-punk and heavy-metal groups like Iron Maiden and the Misfits, it’s musically more aligned with the riff-rock bands of the seventies, such as Blue Öyster Cult. If you are not prone to pearl-clutching, there is a lot of perverse pleasure in GHOST’s music, which has more than a whiff of Spinal Tap. Even Forge’s gnarliest lyrics are also kind of funny: “The swamp of feces that is the world / Flatulates a whirl windstorm in which you swirl,” he sings on “Depth of Satan’s Eyes,” a cold and sludgy track from the 2013 album “Infestissumam.” If you’ve had a bad enough day, the line can feel like a koan, or at least something cute to send to the group chat. “That’s what we’re trying to do with everything that is GHOST,” Forge said. “Taking all these depressive issues—death, doom, gloom, destruction, oppression—and just turning it into something comprehensible and positive.” In another way, Forge is attempting to meet the world on its own terms. “We’re preaching about the evil on the other side,” he said. “My thirteen-year-old self was this angry Satanist who wanted to blow the world up. But now a lot of that is happening on a completely different level—spreading absolute, total death and destruction and chaos, in order for there to be nothing left.”