With American Horror Story: Hotel a little more than a month away, the publicity blitz is ramping up: Entertainment Weekly put Lady Gaga on its cover this week, decked out as the Countess, the bisexual socialite she'll play in the new season.

In the adjoining interview, Mother Monster said we shouldn't take her recent forays into torch songs and musicals as a rejection of her macabre roots.

:I’ve just been weeping while I’m here because I have returned to something I’ve believed in so much—which is the art of darkness,” she explained. “It’s not something that everyone understands. But, for the people that do — Horror Story fans, my fans — there is a true connection between us, and it’s a language within itself.”

She'll get dark alright: As the Countess, Gaga is the newest owner of the Hotel Cortez, a labyrinthine edifice hiding secret rooms and murderous secrets. Oh, and she's a vampire.

“I prefer the term ‘ancient blood virus,’” says series creator Ryan Murphy. “It’s really a form of hemophilia, in a way.”

We love a good bloodsucker—especially with the Countess sinking her teeth into Matt Bomer, Finn Wittrock and Angela Bassett.

Murphy has revealed that all the seasons of American Horror Story are interconnected in some way—so how will Hotel tie back to Asylum or Freak Show?

Given Gaga's Teutonic look on the EW cover, could she be the second coming of Jessica Lange's Elsa Mars?