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There have been few more satisfying phenomena than the rise of Green Lung. Forged in the choking fog of sinister south London streets, they’ve defied every passing trend and become the UK’s leading exponents of proudly traditional heavy metal, with all the occult trimmings.
Everything, from the all-encompassing bombast of their meticulously crafted songs, to the symbiotic relationship they have with the artwork of legendary illustrator Richard Wells, chimes so brilliantly with a very real contemporary need for authenticity that the band’s success has been inevitable. For those looking for the festival headliners of the future, Green Lung have already staked a formidable claim.
On their fourth album, they make their case with such exuberance and bravado that it takes the breath away. Necropolitan is siphoned from London’s dark, otherworldly corners. Green Lung have always revelled in the twilit haze that separates the living from the dead, and these songs offer an even more vivid and disquieting glimpse into the capital’s hidden secrets and immortal antiheroes, pin-sharp modern analogies included as a courtesy.
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The dizzyingly thunderous Dance To The Grave casts a damning eye on the kamikaze greed of tyrannical tech giants and bloated billionaires dragging us all into an idiotic apocalypse. On the insanely catchy Black Magick Radio, they reimagine pirate radio as a conduit for supernatural malice. The full-throttle uproar of Necropolitan Line fills the Tube network with zombies in tribute to the London Necropolis Railway and its early 20th-century transporting of corpses out of the city centre. And grand finale To The Gallows Born evokes Iron Maiden’s Hallowed Be Thy Name for a bone-chilling tale of death at the Tyburn gallows.
Green Lung even manage to pay their respects to revered poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose florid verse provides the inspiration for the wild and esoteric Ozymandias. None of this would count for a hill of beans were it not for Green Lung’s unerring brilliance as songwriters and musicians.
Necropolitan is fit to burst with great riffs, incisive vocal melodies, and smart, nuanced arrangements that imbue every song with startling colour and character. From the treacly organ tones that underpin Black Magick Radio to the shimmering Mellotron and blissful, pastoral harmonies that make To The Gallows Born so gloriously timeless and eerie, this is a sustained explosion of fine details and earthy enhancements, with every element honouring the band’s singular vision.
Frontman Tom Templar has never sounded so charismatic or commanding. Keyboard wizard John Wright is a perpetual source of textural audacity, and Scott Black makes yet another bid to be the most inventive six-string maverick of his generation. The rhythm section is hugely impressive, too.
There aren’t too many reasons to be cheerful in 2026. But the sound of a certifiably great, young-ish band asserting themselves with this much intelligence, charm and bite should give even the most weary pessimists cause for celebration. British heavy metal is alive, well and out of its mind on laudanum, absinthe and riffs the size of St. Paul’s Cathedral. All aboard!
Necropolitan is out September 11 via Nuclear Blast.
