Green Lung and Druidess Lead British Folk-Metal Revival — SkimNews
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- Green Lung's forthcoming fourth album "Necropolitan" takes its inspiration from the "Magnificent Seven" 1830s-40s London cemeteries and the Necropolis railway that transported the dead out of the city.
- Tom Templar of Green Lung argues heavy metal has become a form of folk music — riff-based, circling similar tropes, and thriving in festivals — comparing it to Fairport Convention as much as Black Sabbath; the band's merch served as an unofficial uniform at this year's Desertfest London.
- Druidess singer Shonagh Brown attributes the crossover to a cultural shift away from Hammer horror escapism toward nature and folk traditions, with fellow UK folk-metal acts Old Corpse Road, Winterfylleth, and Wodensthrone charting similar territory.
- Both bands draw on 70s hard rock — Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, prominent organ — and Brown calls the result "music from an analog time," with melody and sung lyrics prioritized over metal's usual velocity.
- The microgenre's seeds lie in early-80s acts Witchfinder General (Stourbridge, now credited as the birth of UK doom metal) and Pagan Altar (south London), whose occult interests came from singer Terry Jones, guitarist Alan Jones's father, with whom Alan played in bands from age 11 in 1973.
- Pagan Altar built their studio on a Brockley site where witches were allegedly burned, and rumors of onstage rituals and hauntings — including a woman in black disappearing through the floor — made them legendary before most of their catalogue was even available to hear.
- Green Lung sells anti-Nazi merch because European far-right bands have co-opted folklore, though Templar argues British folk history hasn't been similarly captured and is more associated with "Glastonbury crystal shop" than extremist politics.
Why it matters: Green Lung's merch functioned as an unofficial uniform at this year's Desertfest London, evidence the folk-horror microgenre has broken from cult obscurity into a tangible festival presence — and the band's anti-Nazi merch stance deliberately distinguishes it from European scenes where far-right groups have co-opted mythology for explicitly political ends.
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