Green Lung’s fourth album, Necropolitan, works best when the band treats its occult themes as a joke rather than a doctrine. The record opens with “Open the Hellmouth,” a sub-two-minute intro built around gang chants about the seventh day of the seventh month. It gives way quickly to “Dance to the Grave,” a direct headbanger where vocalist Tom Templar leans into an Ozzy-like delivery while the rest of the band holds down a muscular groove.
Templar’s lyrics link technology to apocalypse, but the music undercuts that seriousness. “Black Magick Radio” carries the expected early-’70s signifiers—organ, occult references, spooky atmosphere—and “Necropolitan Lane” shifts abruptly toward punk speed with flashy guitar solos and Jethro Tull-adjacent organ runs. The middle of the record stalls: “Evil in This House” and “Together in Death” swap hooks for slower sludge, though guitarist Scott Black’s solo on the latter gives the section a clear high point.
The final stretch recovers momentum. “Ozymandias” sits closer to the retro stoner rock of Kadavar or Witchcraft, and “Alostrael (Be My Babalon)” works as a bouncy concert piece. Closer “To the Gallows Born” lands with enough self-aware absurdity to suit the album’s overall tone. Green Lung don’t ask to be taken seriously, and at its strongest, Necropolitan doesn’t need that request.
