Green Lung - Necropolitan Review
On Necropolitan, Green Lung explore London’s occult underbelly from a driverless Underground train hurtling through the city on a cold October night.
British folk horror has had something of a resurgence of late, with films by Mark Jenkin and Ben Wheatley bringing it back into view. Green Lung have been prodding away at the same atmosphere for years, drawing on films such as The Wicker Man, Witchfinder General and The Blood on Satan’s Claw. You can see it in their gothic album artwork, which looks as though it belongs to a different time.
Their new album, Necropolitan, brings that fascination into London. At forty-one minutes, it’s a contender for the best metal record of 2026, and feels more direct than 2023’s This Heathen Land. Green Lung have always found ways to build their own mythology from the folklore of the British Isles, but there are few more interesting high-concept bands working in metal right now. This time, they draw on the ‘Magnificent Seven’ cemeteries built around London in the 1830s and 40s, and the railway that carried the dead out of the city.
The music is in full swing, driven by riffs that tap into the spirit of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. Their headline show at Desertfest was instantly memorable, as was their slot at ArcTanGent in 2025. They’re now on the Bloodstock 2027 bill, and it feels as though they might only be a year or so away from making the lofty journey to Download. With Necropolitan, the wider metal crowd may finally catch up with the excitement around them.
Green Lung are unafraid to embrace Hammer horror and the pulpier films behind Necropolitan. I’d love to see Tom Templar’s Letterboxd account, should he have one. Yet there’s more to the album than its references. Its haunted houses, graveyards and railways give the band a world in which those heavy riffs can live. The rural English fields of their earlier work feel far away as Necropolitan runs through the heart of the capital. ‘Evil in This House’ takes up the haunted-house story, while the railway for the dead gives the band room to explore the class divisions running through Victorian London. ‘Dance to the Grave’ and ‘Black Magick Radio’ add to the city’s occult atmosphere without losing the grit that comes from setting these stories somewhere Green Lung know.
What raises the band above their contemporaries is their willingness to embrace the cheese. You can hear touches of Queen in their theatrical instincts, while ‘Necropolitan Line’ comes screaming towards you like a secret uncovered on Halloween. The move from rural England to the bustle of Victorian London feels seamless because Green Lung commit completely to the world they’ve made. Templar’s voice is varied enough to carry both its menace and its fun, owing Sabbath a sizeable debt on ‘Evil in This House’. For all the morbid subject matter, the band know when to enjoy themselves.
Irish folk band Madra Salach have recently been covering Ewan MacColl’s ‘Tunnel Tigers’, and, despite the difference in genre, it feels like a spiritual companion to ‘Necropolitan Line’. Both songs turn to the workers who kept a city moving, and the people above them who benefited. Green Lung mine the old line from Waterloo to Brookwood Cemetery for all it’s worth. Sonically, imagine Deep Purple playing on the oldest of Underground lines, the Bakerloo, in the early hours of a cold October morning. Now imagine nobody is driving and the brakes have gone. The organs and guitars battle it out, with John Wright and Scott Black matching Templar’s vision as the song hurtles forward.
Despite the elaborate concept, this is an album built for big rooms. ‘Evil in This House’ and ‘Black Magick Radio’ are fist-pumping, singalong anthems, immediately enjoyable even as they pull you deeper into the band’s occult London. Green Lung have earned a following who turn up in homemade robes and treat a gig like a pilgrimage as well as a concert. Richard Wells’ artwork has helped make their visual identity every bit as recognisable as the music. On Necropolitan, those worlds meet in a record that’s enormous fun to inhabit.