Back in 2023, Green Lung released This Heathen Land, a celebration of the occult, the ancient and the weirdness of medieval Britain. Now, three years later, they’re back with a celebration of Victorian London – but Victorian London as only Green Lung could envisage it.
The city’s cemeteries, which provide the inspiration for Necropolitan and its title, created hidden green oases across London. Naturally, Green Lung have filled those spaces with death, magic and some enormous riffs.
“Open The Hellmouth” is as ominous and occult as you’d want, before the first song proper, “Dance To The Grave”, arrives with a thick groove and the perfect voice for this kind of thing. It is almost the sort of song people who don’t like metal imagine all metal sounds like. Technology is the new opium, it suggests, and although the record is rooted in Victorian imagery, its words are incredibly prescient today.
Somehow, Green Lung manage to make “Black Magick Radio” sound as though it has been hidden in a tomb for 50 years, rather than recorded at the famous Rockfield Studios with Tom Dalgety, who has previously worked with Ghost, Opeth and many others.
“Necropolitan Line”, the quasi-title track, provides a burst of energy. Imagine Iron Maiden with Purple-style keyboards and you’re somewhere close. It is quite something, but it is the authenticity of all this that really comes through on “Evil In This House”. Green Lung don’t merely borrow the imagery; they inhabit it.
“Together In Death” is their idea of a ballad, which means it remains suitably macabre, theatrical and heavier than most bands manage at full throttle.
Then comes “Ozymandias”. Taking its inspiration from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem, it is an astonishing piece that moves from poetry to monstrous heavy metal and seemingly everything in between.
“Alostrael (Be My Babalon)” begins with narration from Riley Pinkerton of American doom metal band Castle Rat. It also provided another title I had to Google. Alostrael was the magical name of Leah Hirsig, one of Aleister Crowley’s Scarlet Women, while Babalon is a goddess within Thelema. There we go. Green Lung aren’t making occult metal for show; they’ve done the reading.
There had to be a gallows somewhere, really, and “To The Gallows Born” supplies it. There’s just a touch of folk about the song and perhaps as much Iron Maiden as anything here. It is a tremendous ending to a tremendous record.
This Heathen Land was phenomenal. Necropolitan is perhaps even more ambitious and very nearly matches it for sheer skill. A year on from Black Sabbath’s final show, and with Iron Maiden growing older, people are inevitably wondering about the future of British heavy metal.
Of all the bands equipped to carry it forward, Green Lung might be the best.
Rating: 9/10
