Behind Tom Templar’s shoulder as we talk over video call is a poster for The Wicker Man, the 1973 cult folk-horror film set on a remote Scottish island, whose sunniness conceals – inevitably – a dark secret. It’s fitting, because Templar is the singer of Green Lung, the breakout British metal band who immerse themselves in British mythology. The forthcoming Necropolitan, their fourth album devoted to the folklore of the isles, takes its inspiration from the “Magnificent Seven” London cemeteries built in the 1830s and 40s, and from the Necropolis railway, which transported the dead out of the city.
No generic demons here: this is metal in the spirit of Fairport Convention as much as Black Sabbath. Metal even feels like a folk movement, in the way it’s full of festivals no one else has heard of. There’s such a thriving ecosystem.” Green Lung have certainly been nourished by it: at this year’s Desertfest in London, their T-shirts felt like an unofficial uniform.
UK black metal has experienced this folkloric crossover, with bands such as Old Corpse Road, Winterfylleth and Wodensthrone, and Shonagh Brown, singer of Newcastle folk-horror-metallers Druidess, has also noticed the evolution. But people spend so much time in front of screens and want to shift towards the natural world, and the folk traditions connect with that.” Green Lung and Druidess don’t just write about the past; they sound like it. There’s plenty of Black Sabbath in both, but lots more Deep Purple, especially in the prevalence of organ.
It is more hard rock than metal: words are sung to be heard, melody matters. It’s music that reveres its history, both cult and occult. That big, rich sound, Brown, says fits their sense of past.
Hailing from Stourbridge, Witchfinder General released two albums that were best known at the time for their cover images, one of them showing a Page 3 model being “murdered” in a churchyard. Only later were they credited as the birth of UK doom metal. Their folk-horror claim lies largely in a song sharing the band name, one inspired by the 1968 horror film starring Vincent Price, extremely loosely based on the life of Matthew Hopkins in the English civil war.
But it didn’t really work because the majority of people were moving with the times and they liked that fast music, and we got left behind.” The other original totems, south London’s Pagan Altar, are more obscure – even in their own time. All that existed was one self-released set of demos, which was gradually reissued in various forms, though a whole catalogue of songs written during the band’s initial existence were later recorded for the Mythical & Magical album. Dance of the Druids, had it been released first time around, might have spoiled one of Spın̈al Tap’s most famous songs: “This ritual of the druids has been the saviour of mankind / Unknown to them the price was paid by personal sacrifice.” But in the absence of much music to hear, word spread of their legend: that they had built their studio on a site where witches were burned in Brockley in south London; occasional hauntings, including one by a woman in black who disappeared through the floor; and that they allegedly recreated satanic rituals onstage.
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