TOM VS. GREEN LUNG: NECROPOLITAN

GREEN LUNG’s new release NECROPOLITAN, a scary tour guide through London’s occult underground, hits shelves and streaming today for your folk horror and doom metal pleasure.

I love word play. When I created my metal & horror podcast, we adapted NECRONOMICON into podcast form with NECROCASTICON. So what is a NECROPOLITAN you might ask? Well, it’s a city of the dead, of course, and what band is better suited to take on this subject than London’s own GREEN LUNG. Their new album, NECROPOLITAN hits streaming today after a few months of teasing with singles, including EVIL IN THIS HOUSE, the stand-out track from the album as well as the accompanying video.

Green Lung is Tom Templar (vox), Scott Black (strings), Joe Ghast (bass), JG Wright (keys), and Matt Wiseman (skins).

Their relationship with English author and illustrator Richard Wells continues in yet another thematic package. His art is unmistakable linocut/woodcut and is gorgeous to behold. The purple aesthetic of this album matches the album’s themes, somewhere between the neon lights of might and the darkness of the underground. Much like their previous album, THIS HEATHEN LAND—which acted like a tour guide for pagan sites in the UK and the green color scheme lent to folk horror—NECROPOLITAN takes you on a psychedelic trip through London’s occult other-side, the urban sprawl of darkness, murder, mysticism, and hauntings.

Speaking of hauntings, GREEN LUNG’s GHOST-ification is nearly complete with this album. Produced by GHOST producer Tom Dalgety (OPETH, GHOST), you can hear his influence not only Scott Black’s guitar, but JG Wright’s keyboards, particularly in the scales and transitions used throughout the album’s ten tracks. But its not just GHOST. Hell, even the closing track of the album, TO THE GALLOWS BORN, is GREEN LUNG’s version of MARY ON A CROSS, a folky metal offering you could have heard fifty years ago in a club in London. 

There’s lots of experimentation present, as we saw on THIS HEATHEN LAND. The pseudo-title track, NECROPOLITAN LINE, hearkens back to last album’s MAXINE with its heavy keyboards, and is the fastest BPM of their catalogue to date. BLACK MAGIC RADIO is a solid doomy song telling the story of English metal. And, as they’ve done previously, GREEN LUNG evokes what has come before. This album is filled with homages from Uriah Heep and Judas Priest, especially on OZYMANDIAS, which sounds like an amalgamation of THE WIZARD’S BIRTHDAY and SAD WINGS OF DESTINY.

But, as I previously mentioned, it’s EVIL IN THIS HOUSE that sets a new standard for GREEN LUNG singles, with their signature doomy riffs (AND THEY BRING ALL THE RIFFS!), Tom Templar’s screaming vocals, and a music video featuring more practical effects than most modern horror movies, the song is peak GREEN LUNG. And both the guitar and keyboard solos sound like they could be from a GHOST song… which is more than appropriate about in a song about a haunted house.

NECROPOLITAN features nine solid songs to add to GREEN LUNG’s repertoire, and fans of doomy stoner metal should be happy with the final product. Horror fans should rejoice, because with GREEN LUNG we have a non-problematic band that speaks to us much more so than the Scooby Doo Mystery Villain that is GHOST, and with them on being on hiatus … I’ve said it before: GREEN LUNG is the result of BLACK SABBATH, DEEP PURPLE, and QUEEN making a baby with GHOST’s producer as the midwife. This new album has come out in time to fill a void created by GHOST’s sabbatical.

TRACK LISTING:

Open the Hellmouth

Dance to the Grave

Black Magick Radio

Necropolitan Line

Evil in this House

Together in Death

Ozymandias

Alostrael (Be My Babalon)

To the Gallows Bor