CHILDREN OF THE STONES

Heavy music is often associated with industrial clamour. Green Lung, however, are imbuing sturdy rock with folk and fairy tales from the English countryside on their third album, This Heathen Land. In the process, they want to emulate the prog-inspired ambition of 70s icons Deep Purple and Rainbow. Prog catches up with guitarist Scott Black and vocalist Tom Templar to find out more.

- Matt Mills

Scott Black spent his childhood immersed in the myths of the English countryside. The Green Lung guitarist grew up in rural Devon and used to pass the time playing with his friends in a disused quarry. Back at home, he’d get told that the quarry was stalked by a woodwose: a hair-coated wild man straight from Arthurian fables. And this wasn’t just a bedtime story that grown-ups invented for children’s ears, either.

“Even the old blokes at the pub that your dad would hang out with used to talk about it,” the musician remembers on a video call with Prog, on which he’s joined by lead singer Tom Templar. “Growing up very close to Dartmoor, before the internet, all of those legends seemed very plausible.”

Since Green Lung formed in 2017, they’ve presented a distinctly folklore-inspired take on classic rock. Their full-length debut, Woodland Rites, juxtaposed the riffing of Black Sabbath, who formed amid the smog of industrial Birmingham, against lyrics about forest rituals and witches’ covens. Their 2021 follow-up, Black Harvest, was self-categorised as the soundtrack to the folk-horror film inside the band’s heads, and now This Heathen Land pushes the five-piece both deeper into the countryside and farther from comparison to any singular band before them.

Green Lung’s third album is a convergence of swaggering hard rock, theatrical organs and quiet, occult folk music. It’s what would happen if Risingera Rainbow lured Atomic Rooster to a pagan ceremony in the heart of an English forest. Second single Maxine (Witch Queen) pays tribute to Cheshire born priestess Maxine Sanders, and is driven by danceable drum beats and twirling, prog-like keyboards.