Green Lung – Necropolitan
Green Lung – Necropolitan
Nuclear Blast
Release Date: 11/09/26
Running Time: 41:16
Review by Dark Juan
Infinity Squared/10
Greetings, dear hearts. Dark Juan here to mash your brains with more than my usual nonsense. This is because both of my dogs have managed to contract gastroenteritis at the same time and the night before today did not involve any sleep because Crow Cottage is awash with dog puke. Both Mrs Dark Juan and I are gelatinous lumps of flesh through exhaustion, and I have decided, for some unaccountable reason, that writing a critical review would be a brilliant fucking idea when the only thing I currently crave is fourteen hours of unbroken sleep. I don’t even want a beer and that is ABSOLUTELY not something you’d normally hear from this quasi-alcoholic ersatz music journo. However, that’s likely to change later on this evening…
Anyway, Mosstopher and Ivy The Terrible are currently snoring peacefully on each side of Mrs Dark Juan, who has done something equally stupid when absolutely fucking exhausted and is continuing to create a veritable army of embroidered pigeons. That is not a euphemism – she sold one and now has orders for twelve more of the fuckers. It will only be a matter of time before we must attend A&E because she’s sewn herself to one…
In other news, it is the annual Rushbearing festival in Sowerby Bridge, and it is warm outside. I’m sweating like a pervert in a Primark changing room. And I have just had a substantial breakfast. The rigours of digestion may carry me to the arms of Morpheus before I finish writing this piece. No doubt you lot out there will be profoundly glad of this.
Let us not be defeatist though! I have been and enticed the Platter of Splatter ™ from where it is billeted and have promised it many blessings, in the form of the latest release from London’s Green Lung, entitled “Necropolitan”, based around a loose concept of the seven great Victorian necropoli (necropolises?) of the capital city of the UK. Necropolitan is a fucking great word so there’s already bonus points awarded for amusing Dark Juan with wordsmithery.
There’s a short intro to the album with oodles of chanting until the band crash into opening song proper ‘Dance To The Grave’. It’s a great song and a more than worthy opening shot across the bows… Let’s see what else is on offer
Well, fuck me crossways. This is not music. This is amplified alchemy. Rarely does Dark Juan hear a band so TOGETHER as Green Lung. The music brings together the finest of early 70s proto-Rock and the meatiness of Black Sabbath. There’s demented, jarring Hammond organ (more bonus points because Dark Juan loves anything with a Hammond organ in it), some absolutely delicious soloing (‘Necropolitan Line’ is especially tasty in this regard, and the whole confection is wholly delightful. There’s a keen sense of humour behind the music too, and this is joy to experience from a band that straddles Doom and Stoner. Normally they are terribly, TERRIBLY serious or stoned to the point of incomprehensibility.
Vocalist Tom Templar deserves note as well. A compelling frontman indeed, who is adept at channelling the ghost of the mighty and lamented Ozzy yet still stamps his own authority all over his vocal performance, and his sharp tones considerably enhance the overall package of delights that Green Lung have delivered to Dark Juan. I was going to do my usual thing and pick a few songs to focus on but I am not going to this time. I am just going to wax lyrical about just how COMPLETE an album “Necropolitan” is. Each song follows a logical progression from the previous one, yet there is still light and shade – ‘Evil In This House’ is a raucous, heavier than your mother in plutonium pants stompalong of a song, but feeds beautifully into disturbingly ballad-adjacent ‘Together In Death’. Dark Juan fucking despises ballads, and his views about those cynical cash grab, sex with girls-pursuing bastards of songs are well known, but ‘Together In Death’ soon rouses itself from gentleness and instead goes for the throat of the listener, yet maintains a disturbingly wired Psychedelic vibe throughout the whole song. Templar’s range is impressive in this song too – going from wistfully vulnerable to murderously muscular.
Yes, this album is very much surpassing expectations so far. Even Mrs Dark Juan (whose preferred music is a peculiar kind of dark Neo-Folk music that only three people worldwide have ever heard) is tapping her foot to the mightiness of Green Lung’s unassailably mahoosive grooves. For Green Lung are groovier than a fuckton of groovemeisters. Their melding of 70s Hard Rock, Doom and Stoner Metal and a nod towards the glory days of 80s NWOBHM means that there really is something for everyone to enjoy on “Necropolitan”. The whole band are tighter than a duck’s arse throughout the album, playing riffs of such colossal majesty that Dark Juan is forced to kneel before them, pledging fealty to the almighty groove. Yet there is an effortless quality to the music – as if these masterpieces have come easily to guys in the band, and it is this… this apparent ease with which the performances of all on the album have come from which lifts it from merely brilliant into something truly fucking transcendent. Even Riley Pinkerton (Castle Rat’s Rat Queen – a band I am surprisingly ambivalent about considering it involves swords, blood, mighty grooves, Death and a scantily clad and heavily armed frontwoman – all of which make Dark Juan get THAT gleam in his eye and makes ladies scurry for the nearest safe place) makes an appearance, narrating some words from Revelations on ‘Alostrael (Be My Babalon)’.
Let’s sum up here. If you like necrophiliac balladry, Motorhead meeting Deep Purple in a seedy back alley and doing a fucking shitload of drugs with Black Sabbath around their Vol. 4 era and discovering a shared love of Gothic Psychedelia and magisterial riffs, then you are going to absolutely dig the fuck out of Green Lung. “Necropolitan” is not just an album. It is a statement, a manifesto, a magnum opus beyond compare. My friends, between The Chronicles Of Manimal and Samara and Green Lung’s releases this year, my top ten list at Christmas is going to be a phenomenally tough choice. This album is at the very apogee of British music releases for 2026.
I cannot state enough how essential this album is. Buy it. All of you. It’s fucking amazing!
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System is utterly destroyed, completely wrecked and probably beyond repair now, because of the ridiculously high score it has just recorded – apparently it is impossible to score infinity squared/10, but Green Lung have just done it. Take that, mathematics! And Oli Gonzalez – hahahaha.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Open The Hellmouth
02. Dance To The Grave
03. Black Magick Radio
04. Necropolitan Line
05. Evil In This House
06. Together In Death
07. Ozymandias
08. Alostrael (Be My Babalon)
09. To The Gallows Born
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
