London’s heavy rock outfit Green Lung are getting into the Halloween spirit with a new animated video for Ozymandias, taken from their fourth album, Necropolitan, out now via Nuclear Blast.
Inspired by Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous poem about the inevitable collapse of empires, Ozymandias finds the band tackling the arrogance of human power through their trademark combination of thunderous riffs, vintage keyboards and supernatural storytelling. Given the current state of world affairs, the subject matter feels particularly timely.
The accompanying animation, created by illustrator Richard Wells and animator Joseph Brett, is a macabre addition to Green Lung’s ever-expanding world of British folklore, pagan mythology and gothic horror.
Produced by Tom Dalgety, whose credits include Ghost and Opeth, Necropolitan was recorded at Wales’ legendary Rockfield Studios, where Black Sabbath, Queen and Judas Priest have all left their mark. This time, Green Lung strip back their arrangements and record much of the material live, allowing their formidable riffs, Hammond organs and Mellotrons to take centre stage.
The album takes its name from London’s seven Victorian garden cemeteries and explores the ultimate futility of human ambition in the face of death and nature. Cheerful stuff, then.
Since emerging from London’s underground with 2018’s Free the Witch EP, Green Lung have established themselves as one of Britain’s most distinctive heavy rock bands, combining the doom-laden foundations of Black Sabbath with a fascination for the country’s darker history.
With Necropolitan, they continue to prove there’s plenty of life left in traditional British heavy metal, even when the subject matter is death.
Green Lung take Ozymandias on the road this December.
