As the summer dies and the shadows start to grow, spooky season will soon land upon us. With the onset of golden leaves and the first chill of autumn, Green Lung’s Necropolitan arrives as the perfect soundtrack for the changing season.

Where Black Harvest explored the supremacy of nature and the enduring power of the old gods, and This Heathen Land led us through Britain’s landscape, folklore, myths, literature and hidden history, Green Lung’s fourth album turns the onset of winter into something darker and more evocative: a journey into the shadows of London, where the ghosts of the Victorian city linger and humanity’s grandest ambitions ultimately return to dust. London’s lords of the riff invite us into a world of overgrown cemeteries, occult folklore, crumbling monuments and the inexorable power of nature. In a sense, Necropolitan is the winter counterpart to the autumnal Black Harvest.

Rather than simply being another Green Lung record about British folklore and the occult, Necropolitan explores genuinely new territory. The biggest shift is that the focus moves from the countryside and Britain’s ancient landscape into the urban, industrial and cultural history of London. Nuclear Blast even describes it as a celebration of the occult lore and heavy-music scene of the band’s birthplace.

In crafting the album, the band have deliberately stripped away some of the ornate production to make the riffs, rhythm section and live dynamics more prominent. The emphasis is on physical weight, creating a less layered, more immediate sound. What will you hear for this? Quite simply, a rawer analogue or live feel that captures the band’s presence on stage.

Arriving after the eerie, brief intro track Open the Hellmouth, Dance to the Grave makes the shift unmistakable. Its razor-sharp intro doesn’t just prickle the hairs on your neck, it slices straight through the quiet before erupting into full-blown ritual. Every Green Lung hallmark is summoned with theatrical force: the sudden, breath-holding pauses, the super-heavy, treble-boosted SG screaming in harmony with the Hammond, and that sense of looming, unstoppable momentum that feels less like a song and more like an invocation.

Black Magick Radio plays like Green Lung’s own supernatural pirate broadcast; a tour through occult rock’s 1970s roots and London’s early goth underground, turning the history of heavy music into something vivid, theatrical and delightfully arcane. A magical intro is combined with a heavy dose of doom. The track is a departure from the norm in subject rather than sound.

Necropolitan Line carries just as much weight, but in its own distinct way. Its punk-driven rhythm doesn’t just rush forward, it barrels in with a raw, urgent energy, and its intro nods to Reaper’s Scythe before opening into a deliberately excessive Blackmore/Lord-style organ-and-guitar duel, similar to the track Burn. Here, the Hammond isn’t simply adding vintage colour; it becomes a lead instrument in its own right, trading phrases with the guitar and joining the riffing rather than sitting behind it. The whole track has a vivid, cinematic edge, full of sharp turns, jolts and a macabre ghost-train momentum that feels both playful and unsettling. Mind the dark…

Equally cinematic, Evil in This House pushes Green Lung into stranger territory, swapping their familiar Mellotron fog for an “ectoplasmic” synth that feels ripped from a paranormal-investigation fever dream. The result is a sly shift from the band’s usual folk-horror atmosphere toward something closer to Hammer Horror; vintage, supernatural, and a touch more theatrical. Indeed, Scott gets his guitar to squeal more than usual in true horrific fashion. This is a new broadening of their sound without losing the haunted character that defines them. You can positively imagine the evil seething under the floorboards of the Mayfair house. Not a track for those that have to sleep with the wardrobe doors closed!

Together in Death slows the tempo to explore a sense of loss through the eyes of a mournful necrophiliac — that deep, weary sigh setting the mood immediately. The joint vocals, appearing throughout the album, work especially well here, adding another new dimension to the band’s sound. Scott’s legato rhythm grinds steadily before he climbs into the upper registers of his fretboard, and the line “You have made me a creature of the night” helps to anchor the album’s overarching winter theme.

Ozymandias arrives and does something completely different; folding 70s Afrobeat percussion, swaggering heavy-rock riffing, and a jazz-inflected solo section into a Maiden-style narrative structure. It’s not just heavier; it’s more rhythmically curious. The fusion of metallic weight, storytelling momentum and jazz phrasing marks a genuine expansion of their palette, suggesting Green Lung are now exploring rhythmic identity as boldly as they once explored folk-horror atmosphere. Go look up Shelley’s 1817 poem for context!

Alostrael (Be My Babalon) clicks onto the turntable with a narrative intro from Revelations, delivered by Riley Pinkerton of Castle Rat (theatrical queen supreme), à la Barry Clayton on The Number of the Beast. In pointing towards Alostrael, the magical name of Leah Hirsig, and Babalon, the divine feminine figure in Thelemic occultism, Green Lung are moving from folk occultism into ceremonial or magical occultism — another departure from the norm. This song is a brief descent into the darker, more esoteric side of London’s occult history before the album’s final confrontation with death.

The closer, To the Gallows Born, launches with a folky, Strat-tone riff. It is a grand, theatrical meditation on execution, mortality and defiance, set against the slow, three-mile procession from Newgate Prison to the scaffold at Tyburn. Traditionally, the condemned were given a final draught of ale at the Angel Inn, located on St Giles High St, as a last earthly mercy: “one for the road”. It is the tale of an unrepentant soul, “sworn upon the horns, always to the jealous one”, who anticipates being set free as they swing to the roars of the crowd. Musically, it is a traditional heavy-metal epic, a send-off with heads held high. Anything but “money for old rope”!

With Necropolitan, Green Lung drive their folklore, occultism and classic-metal roots into darker, heavier territory. London’s cemeteries, ghosts and gallows become the backdrop for a wider meditation on mortality, power and humanity’s futile struggle against nature. Raw, adventurous and steeped in old magic, it’s the sound of Green Lung proving that the past still has plenty of life left in it. Catch Green Lung live at the Dance to the Grave Tour MMXXVI, running across Europe and the UK in December 2026!