Green Lung are reaching back through the history of heavy rock on new single ‘Black Magick Radio’, the latest track from their forthcoming album Necropolitan, due September 11.
Taking its cues from the outlaw spirit of 1960s pirate radio, ‘Black Magick Radio’ imagines the London five-piece seizing control of the airwaves and broadcasting their own transmission. Musically, the band look towards the heavy, strange and increasingly adventurous rock that emerged around the turn of the 1970s, with vintage influences including Lucifer’s Friend and Black Widow woven into Green Lung’s characteristically enormous riffs.
There is plenty of London history buried in the song too. ‘Black Magick Radio’ reaches into the capital’s countercultural past, including a nod to Le Macabre, the famously eccentric Soho coffee house where customers could reportedly drink their coffee from tables shaped like coffins.
Green Lung’s affection for the heavy music that preceded them has always been apparent, but ‘Black Magick Radio’ turns that lineage into the subject itself, wrapping rock history in the band’s own combination of towering guitars, melody and theatrical excess.
The track arrives ahead of Necropolitan, an album deeply connected to Green Lung’s home city. The record explores London through its history, mythology and heavy music culture while setting human ambition against the considerably greater force of the natural world.
With Necropolitan arriving in September, ‘Black Magick Radio’ finds Green Lung tuning into the past without becoming trapped there. Turn the dial far enough to the left and you might just pick up the signal.
