Album Review: Green Lung, This Heathen Land
The ascent of Green Lung to the forefront of the heavy underground has been swift and uncoincidental. Over the last half-decade, the London-based, organ-inclusive nature-cult five-piece have developed a sound both familiar and distinct as their own, driven by brazen, big-swing hooks unabashedly pop in form and melody, doom and heavy rock riff-led groove and an emergent touring pattern further speaking to the we-want-to-do-this-full-time intention on the part of the band itself. This Heathen Land is the third Green Lung full-length and feels duly like a culmination of the time since they released their preliminary single “Green Man Rising” (review here) in 2017 ahead of their first EP, Free the Witch (review here), the next year, as well as a crucial step into the next phase of their career and a new level of distribution as their label-debut for Nuclear Blast. It is clearly not a moment they’re treating lightly, nor should they.
Now labelmates to the likes of Lucifer and Hangmans Chair (along with scores of others including Graveyard, Enslaved, etc.), Green Lung flirt with forest-goth kitsch on This Heathen Land in a manner that refuses not to be both heavy and (mostly) fun. Their sound is immediately identifiable as the spoken intro “Prologue” sets the stage with a description of “a country of lonely tors and desolate moors, of forgotten woods and mysterious standing stones” backed by vintage-ish budget-horror creeper synth before Matt Wiseman‘s drums spring to life with the feedback from Scott Black‘s guitar at the outset of “The Forest Church,” but there are some differences between what Green Lung bring to This Heathen Land and where they were even two years ago on 2021’s Svart-issued Black Harvest (review here) in craft and performance alike, and these are brought all the more into relief by the fact that the new nine-track/42-minute outing was recorded mostly by esteemed and returning producer Wayne Adams (also of Petbrick, JAAW, and others, with a list of albums helmed that has room for both Black Helium and Possessor) at Bear Bites Horse Studios, with mixing by Tom Dalgety and mastering by Robin Schmidt. There is a clear intention toward balancing largesse and the organic aesthetic underpinnings of Green Lung, the elements they derive from classic heavy rock, with the largesse of a modern release on arguably the world’s biggest heavy metal imprint.
This Heathen Land accomplishes this outright, and with the consuming, sweeping momentum built across “The Forest Church,” “Mountain Throne” and “Maxine (Witch Queen),” frontloaded longest-to-shortest after “Prologue” puts you in the place of the record being a BBC documentary on paganism from 1974 as vocalist Tom Templar begins a session of lyrical storytelling corresponding in its has-read-books-of-English-folklore framing to the ambitiousness of both the album’s theme and the breadth of its arrangements, which are dynamic even as Green Lung are undeniably more metal in their presentation than they’ve ever been.
Templar, in “The Forest Church,” the penultimate “Hunters in the Sky,” and elsewhere, can be heard pushing his voice into upper registers and that’s part of it in a classic-metal sense, but in Black‘s gleaming-sword lead tone shredding solos throughout, the punch in Joseph Ghast‘s basslines and the sound and placement of Wiseman‘s drums (Sam Grant is credited with additional drum engineering,), there is a sharpness to Green Lung‘s attack that, while offset by the late-afternoon folk fusion of “Songs of the Stones” — which does bring in an electric guitar later for Black‘s solo — feels very much like the band purposefully stepping up their game to reach as many ears as possible. This has been their modus all along from one release to the next, and they’ve always been songwriters, but in its front-to-back flow and the memorability of the pieces that comprise it, This Heathen Land is a richer manifestation of who they are than they’ve yet had.
Part of why is because, in both the lumbering breakdown chug of centerpiece “One for Sorrow” and the cheeky keyboard of “Maxine (Witch Queen)” that harnesses a bit of the ethic of Type O Negative‘s “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend” — minus the sleaze, plus a witch — they’re simply doing more. Neither Black Harvest nor 2019’s Woodland Rites (review here) wanted for complexity in their arrangements, but This Heathen Land shows characteristic progression in the dynamic interplay between Black‘s guitar and Wright‘s organ, as well as in Templar‘s vocal layering and the placement of backing vocals. It’s somehow completely over-the-top — and never more so than in the finale “Oceans of Time,” in which Templar dons the mantle of Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula to deliver the chorus lyric lifted from the movie with a suitably grandiose sweep, call and response, and so on — and just what it needs to be.
And the procession followed by the songs, from “Prologue” into the push through “The Forest Church,” “Mountain Throne” and “Maxine (Witch Queen)” with the ’60s garage bounce of the latter giving over to the anthemic and boldly heavy “One for Sorrow” — chorus singalongs coming soon to any number of UK festivals, surely; I only hope they go into “Hunters in the Sky” immediately after, and that someone gets it on video — followed by the righteous rug-pull shift to acoustics with “Songs of the Stones” and the regrounding of “The Ancient Ways” before “Hunters in the Sky” unveils a speedier gallop they’ve been holding in reserve and “Oceans of Time” slows from that but spreads itself over a vast expanse in its still-relatively-compact six minutes to cap with a veer into the epic that answers the definitive hook in “One for Sorrow” and delves into gothic romance in a way far more celebratory than ironic.
The last lines as they push into the fadeout, snare popping to mark the steps of the run, guitar shredding wildly, vocals calling and responding, are, “I know you feel it, Vina/I feel it too/You’re part of me now, Vina/I’m part of you,” and the point being underscored is that Green Lung are all-in. Other than that Dracula took place partly in London, there isn’t a lot of connection between “Oceans of Time” and This Heathen Land‘s stated themes around British paganism, but the closer works where it is simply because they make it fit. Confidence and songwriting can go a long way.
Some more grainy synth at the outset ties to “Prologue” and other flourishes throughout, and much as they did with “One for Sorrow” at the end of side A, they execute “Oceans of Time” seemingly with the stage in mind. They’re speaking to their audience, the invitation outright at the beginning, “Come. It’s time to explore This Heathen Land,” and everything that follows, one way or another, unites around that idea even as each song serves its own function in adding to and not detracting from the entirety of the album, demonstrating a mastery of their approach that codifies their earlier work, uses the space in its production to offer new ideas and perspectives, and leaves none of its goals unaccomplished. It is a landmark for Green Lung, and will only bring more converts to their leaf-covered altar.
I was already looking forward to getting my copy this afternoon, but now even more so!
I just can’t get into these guys, I keep trying and thinking I must be missing something. They remind me of Ghost a lot (who I love, well, the first three anyway) but with some ’80s hair metal in the vocals and shredding solos. Maybe they will click for me someday.