Green Lung - This Heathen Land (2023)

Country: UK
Style: Occult Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 3 Nov 2023
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I came into this with high expectations. I liked Green Lung's debut album in 2019, Woodland Rites, and I loved their follow-up a couple of years later, Black Harvest. Well, it's two years on again and here's another one, as if to schedule. I like the cover, which is a neat taken on Penguin paperbacks. The green colour rather than the traditional orange is surely because of Green Lung's name, but I know they published with green covers too, albeit mostly for crime, if memory serves. I also liked the ethnohistorical prologue, as if the band's culture is being explored by the BBC half a century ago, with a combination of fascination and quiet establishment judgement.

It took a while for this album to meet my expectations though. The Forest Church is a solid opener but it's a little overt and with a riff/melody combination that annoyingly reminds of the Inspector Gadget theme tune, even if there's a great instrumental section in the second half. Maxine (Witch Queen) features a glorious organ line behind the riffs, but then turns into a pop song. It's overt as well and highlights how the band is pushing a gimmick, which takes a little of the magic away from me.

In other words, for a while, this is just as blatantly occult rock as their most obvious comparison, Cathedral, were blatantly doom metal. Now, the band as a whole, especially vocalist Tom Templar, play it straight, refusing to acknowledge that this is cheesy but also knowing that we can hear the nod and a wink. There was a lot of this on the debut album but not so much on the follow-up. I was hoping that they'd left it behind.

Fortunately, before long, they do. The Forest Church and Mountain Throne are solid openers, the latter being decent stoner rock bearing its Black Sabbath influence proudly. Maxine (Witch Queen) is pop music but it's a fun pop, always elevated by John Wright's organ. But then they get serious, with One for Sorrow taking things up a level and Song of the Stones adding a quality folk counter. Suddenly we're in the album we should have been in all along and the best news is that we remain there until it wraps with the epic Oceans of Time.

My favourite songs are the first two of those and it's not remotely surprising to see a comment on the album's Bandcamp page about how well these played on a small stage. One for Sorrow is a big song, dipping overtly into the Cathedral songbook to give us doom metal that's tempered for the verses. It's the first song here that feels like it means it, which infuses it with power, and a delicate keyboard line over crunching riffs late on is absolutely delightful. Song of the Stones is absolutely not a big song. It's a very personal song and it's an able folk counterpart to One for Sorrow.

I mentioned in my review of Woodland Rites that it felt like the most overtly folk song, which was May Queen, could have been recorded in a clearing in the middle of a wood, instead of within the walls of a studio. That very much applies to Song of the Stones too, which builds from a slow ritual hand drum beat and soft guitar into a real chant. It simply commands that we listen and it has to be magnetic played on stage in a small venue. If we close our eyes, we ought to feel the leaves.

The final three songs can't match that pair but they do play very well indeed. The Ancient Ways is a doom metal song that retains a folk rock feel. It feels honest and heartfelt and plays so maturely that it's a real grower. There's lots more Cathedral in Hunters in the Sky. Was that a death grunt to kick us off? I think it was. I love the drums behind the riffs during the midsection and there's an impressive organ solo too. And Oceans of Time is the epic I mentioned, going for that feel from the very outset, built with keyboard melody over a soft drone. It's the longest track here and it does a lot with its almost seven minutes.

And so this isn't the killer third album that I was hoping it would be, but it gets there midway, with a couple of absolute gems. The tracks after them feel mature and worthy, but those before them don't. I enjoyed them anyway, don't get me wrong, Maxine (Witch Queen) being highly infectious, but they don't feel like they belong on the same album. They're a level behind what follows them, if not a couple, and would surely have felt even more out of place had they been dotted amongst those other tracks. Every time I listen through this, it truly begins for me with One for Sorrow.

I guess that leaves Green Lung at a crossroads. They can go the cheesy route that Cathedral took, playing serious with over the top material, and become a gimmick band. They have the chops that would make that work, as these first three songs suggest. Or they can treat their occult mindset seriously and merge folk music with metal power like the rest of the album. Those songs right at the heart of the album underline how well they do this and the rest back up their ability. The key point is that, while either way would be valid, choosing both ways feels like a real cheat. Let's see where they go in another couple of years with album number four.

Blood Ceremony - The Old Ways Remain (2023)

Country: Canada
Style: Occult Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 5 May 2023
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I dug into Blood Ceremony a little bit a few years back when I realised that occult rock was not only alive but very well indeed. They were formed in Toronto as far back as 2006 and they released their self-titled debut only two years later, but this is only their fifth album and their first in seven years after 2016's Lord of Misrule. The core of the band is the two remaining founder members, guitarist Sean Kennedy, who's also the songwriter, and lead vocalist Alia O'Brien, who started out as flautist but quickly moved into microphone duties and organ as well.

This fits with what I've heard from them before, albeit a tad lighter, and it's clearly good stuff, but it's also better than it initially seems, something I only gradually realised in a few ways. Part of it's that a majority of the songs build massively from their subdued openings to blistering conclusions, beginning with the opening couple of tracks, The Hellfire Club and Ipsissimus. The former is a little seductive and a little teasing as it builds but it holds back a little too, until it truly comes alive with a ripping guitar solo from Kennedy. The latter was always catchier, the sibilant title rolling well off O'Brien's tongue during the chorus, but again it comes alive with Kennedy's guitar solo, which this time is reminiscent of Blue Öyster Cult.

Part of it is that the album as a whole builds too. I don't dislike these early songs at all, but I found myself paying more and more attention as it ran on. It starts to get away from me too, in the sense that I forget to take notes and become lost in the music. Powers of Darkness is a tasty song as I'm listening to it, very much a vocal piece with some catchy themes, but I didn't realise how tasty until I wandered off to grab some lunch and realised that it was still playing in my head from memory, a mere couple of times through. It's an earworm of a track and a real highlight here.

So are the next couple of songs, as we roll into the stronger second half. There's a far folkier Black Sabbath in The Bonfires of Belloc Coombe, probably the best song from the standpoint of building as it goes. Widdershins is the heaviest song on the album, more akin to the weight of prior albums, and it remains heavy even when O'Brien's playful flute joins in during the finalé. Surprisingly, this heaviest song is followed by surely the lightest in Hecate, which is folky in comparison, revelling in its happiness in a sixties psychedelic pop style.

This album covers a heck of a lot of ground, from the delightful saxophone solo in Eugenie to more traditional fiddle work on Mossy Wood. The more I listen, the more the flute stands out, though it frequently takes a back seat when compared to this year's Jethro Tull album, RökFlöte. Lolly Williams finds a lively vibe that's all about making us move, whether we get up and dance or just bounce within our office chairs. Song of the Morrow, on the other hand, is progressive and epic, almost Led Zeppelin-esque in its structure, if not any particular component. There's even a dash of psychedelic Beatles in there too.

Given that I've already mentioned Jethro Tull, I should mention how similar they aren't, because a rock band with a clear folk influence that features a lead singer who also plays the flute suggests a close comparison and it's just not there. Sure, they were apparently Alia O'Brien's initial favourite band and their most obvious influence is in her flute, but that's about it. The folk here is different in origin, much more reminiscent of Pentangle or Fairport Convention when it isn't Black Sabbath or the various other pioneering occult rock bands. Check out Mossy Wood for that folk side, with a delightful fiddle and a catchy na na na vocal conclusion. It's Pentangle but heavier with a darkness hovering over it.

And so, while I liked this immediately, I like it a lot more after a few repeat listens and some time away from it to discover how much it had stuck in my brain. It's been a while since I dug into Blood Ceremony's previous albums but this feels a little lighter and a little more varied, especially with the psychedelic pop influence in Powers of Darkness and Hecate and the classic rock angle in some of Kennedy's solos and Song of the Morrow. The more I think about it, the more I like it. I think I've started off June with an 8/10.

Green Lung - Black Harvest (2021)

Country: UK
Style: Occult Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 22 Oct 2021
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I liked Green Lung's 2019 debut album, Woodland Rites, a lot, if not quite as much as other critics who fawned over it. This follow-up is better to my ears, doing much of what its predecessor did but slicker and much more emphatically. The production is in your face, almost exploding through the speakers with a burning energy, and the bottom end is particularly bombastic. The impression is that we have to fear for the stages up and down the United Kingdom because they're just not going to be the same after this band wraps up their sets. Everything feels deliberately loud and it stays that way, even after you turn down the volume. Which you won't want to do, trust me.

I'm still hearing the expected Black Sabbath influence for an occult rock band filtered through a more modern Cathedral update to that bedrock, but there's an American rock element to this one that sits behind all that that I don't recall from the debut. It's there as the folk chant of The Harrowing builds to something a lot more intense halfway through and it feels to me like a sort of arena rock band who you don't expect to gallop, like, say, Boston, who promptly start to gallop with abandon and it's clear that they're effortlessly good at it, even if they don't do it often.

I think it's mostly the very seventies style heavy organ of John Wright that brings that to the fray. He clearly listens to Tom Scholz and he channels a lot of Foreplay into The Harrowing, which benefits from that punchy production. It's overt in Leaders of the Blind too but it's rarely actually absent, after that escalation in The Harrowing and some hovering tantalisingly behind the shoulder of Old Gods. It's not far away wherever the band go on this album.

As is perhaps inevitable with occult rock, there's a strong folk element here and much of this feels like folk horror. I'm actually surprised that only one of these song titles decorates the spine of a novel on my horror shelves. It feels like every one of these should be British folk horror novels, probably in slim paperbacks published by New English Library in the seventies. Maybe I should write some more. I did, however catch others in the lyrics, Dennis Wheatley showing up in at least Upon the Altar.

If seventies horror makes you think of schlock, though, I should scotch those thoughts quickly because there's a real maturity here in the songwriting, which is at least a step up from its predecessor. Songs like Graveyard Sun and Born to a Dying World are admirably deep, rising and falling but never losing any of their power and impact. The title track does a lot too in its mere two and a half minutes. Excepting the intro, it's easily the shortest song on offer here, with the majority of songs comfortable at a four or five minute length, longer enough than commercial singles to get our teeth into them but not quite so much as to become epic.

I appreciated this maturity. Sometimes the heaviest bands aren't those who never do anything else but those who feel comfortable in softening up when songs demand it, only to absolutely crush when it comes time to trawl in a perfectly placed killer riff and escalate. There's a particularly effective riff on Doomsayer that I adore, but the main one from Reaper's Scythe is a killer too. These are the sort of quintessential Sabbath riffs that are so simple that we can't help but wonder why nobody came up with them sooner. Then again, Tony Iommi has been doing that for half a century and more. It's a very particular and rare talent.

I know this has to get an 8/10 from me because I noted half the songs down as highlights, there isn't a duff track anywhere to be found and I'm having trouble not just leaving it all on repeat for the whole day. I have another review to do and need to move on, but I don't wanna. So an easy 8/10. This band is going to make a serious impact over the next few years if they keep going like this.

Jess and the Ancient Ones - Vertigo (2021)

Country: Finland
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 21 May 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Wikipedia

Here's an album I've been looking forward to for a while. Jess by the Lake's Under the Red Light Shine was my Album of the Month a couple of years ago in June 2019 and Jess's day job is fronting Jess and the Ancient Ones, an occult rock band from Finland. I don't like this album, their fourth in a decade, as much as I liked her solo album, but I still like it rather a lot. It's acutely early seventies in nature, with a prowling bass and a cool Hammond organ but with plenty of vestiges of the psychedelia of the late sixties and, somehow, often an agreeably contemporary touch too. That's a neat trick to master.

For instance, while Jess has a huge voice and an almost unparalleled ability to go from gentle croons to wild wails in a heartbeat, she comes across initially on World Paranormal like Chrissie Hynde, as if this is a new musical departure for the Pretenders. It's poppy and it's perky and it's neatly delivered in waves, as if there's a musician somewhere on stage responsible only for tweaking an intensity dial to ramp things up or to calm them down again.

For the most part, it's very lively, because almost everything here feels like it has to be lively. In fact, it's such an up tempo album that it really takes until the intro to the eleven minute closer, Strange Earth Illusion, to really slow down and take a breath. That doesn't mean that it's all done at lightspeed, but it's always bouncy, whether it's the keyboard line on Talking Board that sounds like a spooky cartoon theme tune or the barrelling beat of Summer Tripping Man. It refuses to be ignored. If you're in a room while this is playing, and I mean any song on the album, then you're going to find yourself tapping your foot and eventually dancing around, because it's irresistible.

The band are clearly capable and I thoroughly enjoyed the sonic webs that they wove here, but Jess is the spider at the centre of all of them and she makes it crystal clear why the band's name is Jess and the Ancient Ones rather than just the Ancient Ones. The riffs blister and the keyboards swirl and the instrumental sections are great, but she's always ready to steal our attention back with a command. Her most overt showcase is on What's on Your Mind, but most of these songs feature her singing at a variety of intensity levels and always seeming to have another one ready when we think she's hit her limit.

My favourite song is Love Zombi, but I'm not sure why. It's as lively as the rest, but it has an extra je ne sais quoi that I'm still trying to figure out. Maybe it's the way that Thomas Corpse solos over the early riff. Maybe it's the playful and sassy vocal melody. Maybe it's the bass of Fast Jake that runs around in the background like a chicken with its head cut off. Maybe it's the keyboards that alternate between endearingly spooky and chiming like crystal raindrops. I think it's all of the above combining into the most effective groove on the album.

And there are a lot of effective grooves on this album, because it's built on them. Some of the songs are more traditional than others, like the opener, Burning of the Velvet Fires, which could have been a cover of something from back in the proto-metal era. Some feature neat samples, from movies like Dr. Strangelove and The Exorcist, with the clownlike laughter in Talking Board really adding character to the song. Some are more frantic than others, like Summer Tripping Man, which must be a riot live. But all of them feature effective grooves and your favourite song is likely to be whichever one has the groove that speaks to you.

It's a wildly different album to the solo Jess by the Lake release I liked so much a couple of years ago, heavier and livelier, but it's a really good one anyway. I've been playing it solidly for a couple of days and really ought to be moving on to another one. Maybe after this next listen through...

Hexvessel - Kindred (2020)

Country: Finland
Style: Psychedelic Folk Rock
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 17 Apr 2020
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Here's something utterly sublime! I've been listening to this over and over for a few days now and it's still as fresh now as on my first time through, when I wanted to join in because it felt ritualistic and inviting. I didn't know what they were doing, but it felt like I should be part of it, because it would help to achieve something worthy. What I have no idea, but it feels right, because, even if this is often dark, it's never destructive.

Hexvessel describe what they do as "wyrd folk" and that's as appropriate as anything else I can come up with. The base is clearly in folk, mostly of the traditional English nature, though occasionally this sounds like the Mamas and the Papas on acid. While the band are Finnish, its leader is British, a gentleman called Mathew McNerney who sings and plays guitar. From his lead, they venture politely and confidently into occult rock, alt rock, prog rock, psychedelic rock, even roots rock, all with consistent success.

Every song here resonated with me and almost every song here, at one point during the last few days, was my favourite. I'm not sure that an order has settled into place yet and it may never. It may depend on my particular mood at any particular time. I've already woken up in the morning with different songs playing in my head, so I'll run through them all.

Billion Year Old Being blew me away. It's seven minutes, easily the longest song on the album but it does so much and it does it all effortlessly. It's a song of two halves. The first is rather like a theatrical occult rock band of the early seventies, with chanting, heavy organ and staccato riffs. After it's built to an instrumental crescendo, it transitions to the second half, which is folk, gentle even when the drums kick back in and a darkness hangs over it all.

Demian continues that but with a whole slew of layers and effects applied to render it much darker. It's much harder to be gentle while playing with fuzz and distortion and walls of urgency, but there are moments, even if they're hiding on the other side of a cloud peeking through on occasion.

Fire of the Mind goes back to gentle, with crystal clear picking and a viola that aches like a hurdy gurdy. This one's a vocal track, with McNerney at his most free but plaintive, almost bleeding out emotion. It's a cover of a song by Coil, but it's completely at home here and, like Johnny Cash did so often, they've frankly taken ownership. They may not have written it but it may be their song now.

Bog Bodies is gentle in a completely different way, like occult rock played as smooth jazz. Kimmo Helén, who contributed the viola on Fire of the Mind, brings in a gloriously smoky trumpet here. This is so laid back that it has almost no weight. I felt like I could easily balance it on a fingertip like a butterfly and, like a butterfly, it eventually catches a breath and floats off into the sky.

Phaedra sits at the heart of the album, with an ominous drum echoing a real power in the vocal. McNerney isn't gentle here; he's commanding, rather like a doomladen Nick Cave. "I have strength," he begins. "I fear nothing." What an opening statement! The sheer emphasis in play is helped by the song being bookended by very different instrumental interludes. Sic Luceat Lux is wild and experimental, mixing Jandek with Coil. Is that a bicycle bell? We should ask Antti Haapapuro, who's credited on "found sounds". However, Family, is a sliver of light in the darkness, peaceful acoustic folk guitar.

And that leads us into the final three songs, which play with gentleness in different ways. Kindred Moon, the title track, I guess, is elevated by what sounds like reeds thrashing a steel barn for percussion. McNerney croons as if that's the most natural sound in the world. The chorus is almost syrupy, soothing us as we "pray to your light, kindred moon". There's darkness here too, but it's epic darkness and the song is a ritual ward against it.

If I had to pick a favourite, which I really don't want to do, it's likely to be Magical & Damned. It's another gentle song that's ever as dark as it is light. It has a late Nick Cave piano-driven vibe, but with a far softer vocal than Phaedra, subtly teasing its dark truth rather than flaunting it, through a lyric that could have been written by Leonard Cohen.

Again McNerney captures us early. I couldn't quite grab the entire opening lines, but it's about hurricanes with female names being the deadliest and when swept away by you, "it feels good to die". It's achingly beautiful, especially when the chorus highlights a lament. "She's so beautiful and so magical... and damned." This song so calmly eviscerates me every time. It's seeped into my soul.

Given the unenviable task of following it and also wrapping up the album is Joy of Sacrifice, which title capably sums up the dualistic light and dark sounds of this album. It's another gentle song and another beautiful one, a backing vocal layering over the lead with incredible effect, reminiscent of Linda Perhacs. It's heartfelt and hypnotic and it's a suitably haunting way to leave us.

I hadn't heard of Hexvessel before, though McNerney did contribute a great guest vocal to the Me and That Man album I reviewed recently. I'll surely be picking up their back catalogue after this experience, though. The band were formed in 2009 and this is their sixth album, so there's plenty for me still to discover. I'm totally hooked, enough that I'll be utterly shocked if this doesn't turn out to be my album of the year.

Frankly, this is as close as I've come to giving a 10/10, which I refuse to do out of principle; I believe that a maximum can only fairly be given after at least five years of still sounding this damn good and remaining relevant. It may well get there, but I'm sure that I'll be adding it to my frequently replayed list, where it will fit well alongside the first couple of Leonard Cohen albums, as well as Joy Division and Susanna and the Magical Orchestra.

Now I just need to figure out how to stop listening to it so I can move on to review something else.

Green Lung - Woodland Rites (2019)

Country: UK
Style: Occult Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Mar 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter

One of the surprises I received after starting to dig back into rock music at depth was the resurgence of occult rock, which sounds like it shouldn't even be a genre but has somehow become a burgeoning one. It occupies a distinctive space at the crossroads of a number of genres.

Most occult rock bands cite Black Sabbath as an overt influence, though the true originators were an American band called Coven, whose 1969 album called Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls predated Sabbath's debut by a year. A string of coincidences include the opening track being called Black Sabbath and the band's bassist being called Oz Osborne.

From Black Sabbath (or Coven, if you know them), it's hardly a long trek into either doom metal or stoner rock territory. Occult rock encompasses both and often adds a folk influence too (and that's traditional folk rather than folk metal) or a psychedelic one. Topping all that off is a focus on Satanism and the occult as an overt lyrical theme.

Green Lung are a quintessential example of occult rock. This debut album of seven new songs, none of which were on their EP from last year or their demo from the one before, is very much like early Black Sabbath with the heaviness toned down just a little by production, which makes it sound like the band are performing to us from the other side of the veil between life and death and that's subduing everything. However, the riffs are there, the vocal sneer is there and the psychedelic edge is there.

The most obvious comparison, though, are Cathedral, who chose to channel the Sabbath sound through a knowingly cheesy filter, especially with the copious use of clips from horror movies. Green Lung use samples on three songs here, plus the intro, and that helps them to be as clearly cheesy as Cathedral ever managed. However, Tom Templar's vocals are a little lower in the mix so the lyrics are accordingly a little less obvious until we pay attention.

And, when we do, we realise that Templar Dawn or Let the Devil In aren't too far removed in tone from, say, Cathedral's Hopkins (The Witchfinder General), even if there's nothing here as blatantly over the top as the doom exotica of Voodoo Fire. That's more obvious on the video for the catchy single Let the Devil In, which combines footage from films like Häxan, some nunsploitation and one of the Dennis Wheatley Hammers.

There's more folk apparent here and not only during the intros to tracks or the album itself, courtesy of a two minute Initiation. The folk tinges help set the scene for these five or six minute stories. It's no coincidence that May Queen is at once the most evocative song on the album and the one with the most folk on offer. It's hard not to imagine the band in a studio here; surely they're recording the song from a clearing in the middle of a wood.

There's more psychedelia too, especially a fantastic section three minutes into The Ritual Tree, which adds a whole new level to that song. Everything musical here is aimed at building moods. While Templar's vocals tell stories rather than conjure up ritual, the music does a pretty good job of the latter while he's setting the scenes. The combination is impressive.

I've seen a lot of wild praise for Woodland Rites and I can't say that I find myself sold to the same degree. The best debut album of 2019? Come on! We're still in March and I'd be surprised if it's the best debut of this month. It is, however, clearly an impressive album, mature and well crafted. For them to be this good on a debut bodes very well indeed. Now, just "open your heart and let the Devil in."