Interview: Green Lung
These songs have been written and arranged to lend themselves to live shows more than more than anything, so it's been really fun to play them in the intended setting.
Green Lung’s new album Necropolitan is a hard rocking blast to the senses from one of the UK’s finest heavy metal bands, as band who keep on getting better and better and the songs that make up the record is a definite headbangers dream! To celebrate the release of the record, Gavin Brown caught up with Green Lung guitarist Scott Black to get an insight into Necropolitan as well as discussing their upcoming tour, playing Desertfest and with Acid Bath and all manner of horror and occult related topics.
E&D: Your new album Necropolitan is out very soon. How excited are you to be back with this record?
Scott: Oh, so excited! It’s been a long time. since we recorded it as well. We recorded it back in January, so it always feels like you’re sitting on an egg for nine months, and it’s one of those things where no matter how much you know you love what you’ve done and you love the material, you never really know how it’s going to be received. I call it Schrodinger’s cat, how Schrodinger never knew whether the cats were alive or not. It’s like Schrodinger’s riff or something! You just never really know how it’s going to be received. So it’s a huge amount of anticipation, slight amount of trepidation, and a lot of excitement!
E&D: Schrodinger’s riff could be the name of an album!
Scott: That’s maybe my first solo record!
E&D: How was the experience of recording the album at the legendary Rockfield Studios?
Scott: Oh yeah, it was incredible. I’m such a huge Queen fan. Brian May is my all time guitar god, and it was amazing to be in the same space that they recorded some of their most important albums, and just to use some of the same equipment. We have the ‘Killer Queen’ piano on moments in the record, and all the guitars were recorded through the same outboard EQs and that kind of thing that were used on Night At The Opera. I think it’s easy to get cynical and disillusioned with your music career as you go on through the years, but that was a real back to being a teenager levels of excitement for me being in that place.
E&D: Can you tell us about the cover art for the album and how it ties in with the songs?
Scott: Yeah, absolutely. It’s designed and illustrated as always by Richard Wells, our long time collaborator, and it’s basically the arch from Egyptian Avenue in Highgate Cemetery, with a huge hellmouth erupting. I guess the themes of the album centre around the magnificent seven cemeteries of London. Probably the most iconic of which is the Highgate Cemetery, but also it’s set at the peak of the British Empire, and in Victorian England, and a lot of the themes are around death and impermanence, and the idea that these magnificent seven cemeteries are meant to be a lasting monument to the grandiosity of the Victorian rich, and within 50 years, they’re just turned to rubble and being completely abandoned, and so they’re used as a bit of a metaphor for those themes around death and impermanence, and that’s pretty much the thematic core of the album in a nutshell.
E&D: Is the album a love letter to the London of Green Lung as well?
Scott: Yeah, absolutely. It feels maybe like a pivot from the countryside into the city, but in the same way that we’ve always had a focus on folklore and those kind of stories, this is very much taking that idea, and instead of it being Britain as a whole, just focusing on London. So still, the focus is on folk and the narratives and the stories of our hometown, but just looking at how those folk traditions grow and exist in in the city as opposed to in the in the countryside.
E&D: So it’s more of like an urban folklore?
Scott: Exactly.
E&D: What are your favourite places in London?
Scott: All of the Magnificent Seven are fantastic. I’m a big fan of South West Norwood Cemetery as well. I think for me, London is one of the great cities of the world. It’s steeped in occult a lot more, and the history of the occult, and I think because of the the last wave of spiritualism and that explosion of Western esotericism being in the early 19th century when London was at its peak, it means that you can pretty much go anywhere in London and find somewhere the OTO used to operate out of, or the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, or somewhere that Crowley lived, or William Blake, Austin Spare as well. There’s just all important figures in the occult and Western esotericism, and magical disciplines that are all based in London. You can go and see it. For example, the metal bar Helgi’s, used to be one of the bases of the OTO back in the 1920s and that kind of thing. I think maybe why they bought it.
E&D: Do you love discovering places like these all when you’re on tour?
Scott: Yeah, we do. We make an effort to get out, and it gives you somewhere that’s not the green room to just stew in and go and see something. We spend a lot of time on Atlas Obscura, finding odd places to go in small Polish towns and the such.
E&D: What is the meaning of the album’s title and ‘Necropolitan Line’ that you deal with on a song on the album?
Scott: Yeah, I think ‘Necropolitan’ in terms of it being like a big city of the dead. ‘Necropolitan Line’ was based on a real short lived railway that was made to ferry the dead from the centre of London to suburban cemeteries on the outskirts, London’s population exploded in a very short amount of time, which meant that necessarily the number of dead bodies that the municipal services had to deal with exploded in a very short time as well. So, I think things like the railway line that ‘Necropolitan Line’ is based on, there was just this scramble to deal with how you deal with that amount of dead people. I guess it’s interesting though. It’s a very British thing. Apparently, even though it was used exclusively to ferry corpses, it also had a class-based ticketing system. So you get like a first-class ticket, second-class ticket, third-class ticket for your dead uncle or whatever. Not really sure what perks first-class came with, but yeah, I’m not sure what a corpse would need!
E&D: Who do you think would make the perfect station announcer on a ‘Necropolitan Line’?
Scott: I feel like Peter Steele from Type O Negative. Although he’s a bit too American to be on the London Underground, isn’t he? Maybe Christopher Lee, he could do a great Tannoy announcement!
E&D: You have Riley Pinkerton from Castle Rat doing narration on the album. How did that come about?
Scott: We toured of them back in September 2024. They were supporting us on our first ever American tour, and I think it might have been one of their very first tours. So it’s been a joy to see them explode in the way they have in the last couple of years. We got on really well with them on the tour. Always kept in touch. That song is written about Aleister Crowley’s long-term partner and magical muse who was an American woman, so we thought, hey, we need an American woman, and Riley is not only the perfect American woman to do it, but also possibly the only American woman we know! It works out perfectly.
E&D: How amazing was the experience of playing at the Roundhouse as part of Desertfest in May?
Scott: That was, spiritually, maybe the most important gig ever. I mean, the band started during a Desertfest. We all got together, and Desertfest had been the guiding light for a lot of my young adult life, it was kind of like my Christmas. My years were oriented around Desertfest weekend. So to have headlined that festival was something really, really special and I think it might have been the most nervous I’ve ever been. It was genuinely a pinch myself moment. It was huge for me.
E&D: Who else did you catch over the weekend, or were you just concentrating on on your set?
Scott: Yeah, I think I was just trying to stop myself from going mad! I think we just camped out at the Roundhouse, to be honest. We saw Elephant Tree, obviously Inhuman Nature, Wytch Hazel, Pigs. We had a hand in creating that stage, so it was all bands that we love and respect. Elephant Tree were a last-minute addition, but those guys actually headlined the first ever gig that me and a couple of other guys in the band, played in different band. So, yeah, it’s fair to say that if Elephant Tree didn’t exist, then Green Lung wouldn’t exist.
E&D: You’ve just been announced to playing Bloodstock as well next year. Are you looking forward to that?
Scott: Yeah, absolutely. It’s been an odd year, as I mentioned. We recorded in January, and then having this album up your sleeve means that we haven’t really stepped out of the touring cycle yet. I’m chomping at the bit to get back out on the road. Bloodstock’s going to be absolutely amazing. Our first big gig ever was Bloodstock in 2021. I think the last show we had played before lockdown would have been maybe the Black Heart or something like that, a smaller kind of grassroots venue, and then the first gig we played post pandemic was the Sophie stage at Bloodstock, which was quite a baptism of fire! To go back to Bloodstock as special guests is a real honour, and those guys have always been so supportive of the band and championed us.
E&D: What other festivals have you loved playing over the years as well?
Scott: I’m a big fan of Copenhell over in Denmark. That one’s really cool. It’s a lot smaller than a lot of the UK festivals. I think it’s subsidised by the Danish government or something because they’ll always have the same lineups that will be doing the colossal metal festivals, but in a really intimate fun-sized place. Mystic Festival in Poland, I’ve got a massive soft spot for, which is another smaller metal festival held in the shipyards in Gdansk. Absolutely love that place. Yeah, those two are ones I always enjoy going to and playing at.
E&D: How was the experience of playing with Acid Bath at their first ever UK show, was it as hot on stage as it was in the crowd?
Scott: Man, I think that might have been the hottest I’ve ever been in my life. It was seriously unpleasant! I was envious of Acid Bath because I think they’re acclimatised to that sort of humidity, being from Louisiana. But it did feel quite fitting, to be honest. Obviously, sludge isn’t the most natural bedfellows for the kind of music we do. I was a bit worried that we’d stick out like a camp, bombastic sore thumb sandwiched between Conan and Acid Bath. But yeah, it was great fun. Huge fan of Conan as well. Those guys, have been a big part of my musical life since long before Green Lung so it’s always really nice to play with those guys, and to play with legends of New Orleans scene, it was a great experience.
E&D: How has the material from Necropolitan gone down? You debuted ‘Necropolitan Line’ live at that Acid Bath show.
Scott: Yeah, it was the live debut of ‘Netropolitan Line’. These songs have been written and arranged to lend themselves to live shows more than more than anything, so it’s been really fun to play them in the intended setting.
E&D: Are you looking forward to your tour with High on Fire and Gnome in December too?
Scott: Yeah, absolutely. One of the big ones that got away for us over lockdown was supporting High on Fire actually on their 2020 UK tour, and Matt Pike, both in Sleep and High on Fire, has been such an evergreen guitar hero for me throughout all my adult life. So it always felt like one that got away with not getting that opportunity to tour with High on Fire due to the pandemic. So being able to do it all these years later feels great. I’m very much looking forward to it. And Gnome, just absolutely love Gnome. Yeah, I’ll have my pointy red hat on every day!
E&D: Who else have you loved playing with, and what shows stick out to you in your time with Green Lung so far?
Scott: I’m a huge fan of Wytch Hazel and a huge fan of Boss Kelloid as well. I think Boss Kelloid are one of the finest bands to have come out of the UK in the last couple of decades. So to go on tour with them, bring them out with us, was really great fun. Inhuman Nature as well. It feels like they’ve exploded in the last couple of years, which is really nice to see. And Lowen as well, who are doing really well at the moment and a really special band as well. It feels like the UK is bursting with really cool talent from like lots of diverse musical genres as well. It’s been great fun to bring those guys on tour and to see how they’ve exploded in popularity in the last couple of years.
E&D: With folk horror being a big part of Green Lung and your music. What are some of your favourite folk horror movies, and what are some underrated ones that you could recommend?
Scott: Well, I’ll start off the big ones obviously, which are the Unholy trilogy, Blood On Satan’s Claw, Wicker Man, and Witchfinder General are the kind of canonical answers. In terms of ones that I’ve enjoyed recently, there’s a really cool film called A Dark Song, which is about a bereaved mother who hires an occultist to perform some kind of necromancy, but it’s done in a really disturbing and haunting way, and that’s a film I don’t think many people have seen. Maybe a little bit more on the occult side than the folk horror side, but definitely in that kind of vein, and it is fantastic. Fréwaka. That one’s really good as well.
E&D: Would you love to make your own Green Lung horror film or soundtrack a film as well, has that ever been talked about?
Scott: Yeah, absolutely. I think our ambition outstrips our means quite a lot. But for a couple of albums, we’ve been talking about what if the album was the soundtrack and the music video was a long film to accompany it. That would be, a really fun thing to do. I mean, in some ways, Black Harvest and This Heathen Land, in terms of the soundscapes and the sound worlds that we used, was very kind of filmic and inspired by film soundtracks, so yeah, it’d be something we’d love to do.
E&D: Do you think folk horror is quintessentially a British thing, or would it take another form if it was in America, for example?
Scott: I think it kind of does take another form. I think it’s definitely more of a European thing than an American thing. I heard an interesting theory that if you look at British and American horror, they reflect the two countries’ shared history. So, for example, a lot of British horror will be based in cities, which obviously folk horror bucks that trend. But if you look at like Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, or An American Werewolf In London, or any of the kind of classic Hammer horror films, a lot of them will be based in London. And the theory is that the shared national trauma of industrialisation manifests in our horror films. So we’re kind of scared of the urban environment, whereas if you look at American classic horror, it tends to be set in the countryside. So Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or Friday the 13th, or even modern home invasion ones. They’re usually set in the sticks like The Hills Have Eyes All of it is around being isolated in the countryside, and the idea that America, as a nation, grew out of industrialised areas, and they’re more scared of the countryside, which I find quite interesting. How the two cultures look at urban and rural landscapes, and how that inspires our horror films.
E&D: What is it that is still so infinitely fascinating about the occult to this day?
Scott: I think the fact that it is as wide ranging as it is. The occult encompasses everything from tarot cards to the temple of psychic youth and ceremonial magic, all the way to Kabbalah and Gnosticism. So it’s such a wide-ranging thing that there’s such a deep well of spiritual traditions to learn about and to draw on. It’s one of those things where the more you learn about any of the kind of practices or orders, the less spooky it is. Then you start to see that a lot of our ideas about the occult are culturally conditioned and maybe aren’t as malevolent and nefarious as they say.
E&D: How did you come to be interested in the occult?
Scott: I think mine was a a slightly different route in. I meditate a lot, and I am a practitioner of Chan, which is like an old Chinese precursor to Zen, basically.I got interested, really in starting to read about, just from a very casual interest in what figures like, for example, Crowley were talking about and what their kind of metaphysics were, and then seeing all the kind of parallels between anything from Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism to things like Thelema, and then realising that there was quite a lot of common ground that isn’t immediately obvious in a lot of these traditions. So yeah, I think I get quite interested in learning about the different belief systems within the occult from a kind of perennialist perspective in terms of looking at what the common ground is, and I find that convergence really fascinating.
E&D: Aside from the album release and the tour, what’s next for Green Lung?
Scott: We have a follow-up in the works, not quite a full album. I an’t say too much about it, but I’m very excited to announce it and it’s a little bit of a very interesting tangent that I think a lot of people will be excited about, but yeah, I’m just looking forward to playing live again. Is it my favourite aspect of the band? I don’t know. I love studio and live equally, but I’m absolutely jonesing to get back on the bus and play some shows and just be a tour baby!
