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Review: Green Lung/Boss Keloid, Thekla
Having just released a strong late contender for Album if the Year in the form of This Heathen Land – A Journey Through Occult Albion, London’s Green Lung find themselves one of the hottest tickets of the autumn, with a sold out UK tour. We shan’t be seeing them in venues this small again.
The packed Thekla provides a great opportunity for Wigan’s Boss Keloid, who seize it with considerable enthusiasm. Their quirkily titled, complex prog-doom compositions are so lengthy that they only have time to play six of them, beginning with Gentle Clovis (which is anything but gentle) and Smiling Thrush, both from their Family the Smiling Thrush album.
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“Thank you all so much for not fucking off as soon as we started to play,” quips frontman Alex Hurst appreciatively. He needn’t have worried, as this audience couldn’t be more receptive. There’s a hard, abrasive, King Crimson-esque twist to their heavy prog, with a mutant folky edge courtesy of Paul Swarbrick’s guitar, that sets Boss Keloid apart from the hordes of lumpen doom-sludgers. Hopefully this tour will help them get the recognition they deserve.
“Bristol – are you enjoying the heavy metal concert?” demands Tom Templar halfway through Green Lung’s set. Bristol certainly is. You couldn’t squeeze another body on board the good ship Thekla, so packed is the venue tonight. Members of the Blackthorn Ritualistic Folk Group, who starred in the video for Hunters in the Sky are present too (“Tories and landlords can leave the room now,” remarks Templar by way of introduction to that one), and there even seems to be an Ooser tucked away in a corner of the stage.
Naturally, everybody wants to hear the new album, which goes full Folk Horror on our asses. And Green Lung certainly don’t disappoint on this front, playing every track from it except The Ancient Ways, starting with the prologue and scene-setting The Forest Church. Maxine (Witch Queen) is next – all big riffs and swirling keyboards. Is it about Maxine Sanders? Who can tell? But given Green Lung’s frequent lyrical and visual references to the sixties and early seventies, that wouldn’t come as a surprise, any more than it would to learn that they’re intimately acquainted with the early work of Black Widow and Black Sabbath.
The relatively mellow Song of the Stones is introduced as being the first Green Lung song without a heavy metal riff. Driven by a steady drum beat, its harmony vocals and Wicker Man vibe suggest a fruitful avenue for future experimentation. As on the album, the epic Oceans of Time (someone’s been watching the Francis Ford Coppola Dracula closely) closes the show. There are plenty of old favourites scattered throughout the set too, notably Woodland Rites, The Ritual Tree and Reaper’s Scythe.
It comes as no surprise that the Lung’s hymn to nun corruption, Let the Devil In, is the first encore, getting everyone chanting “Let him in!” as though possessed. A cracking Graveyard Sun from the Black Harvest album wraps things up. Unlike those solemn, corpse-painted Scandinavians, there’s a tangible, very English Amicus/Hammer Horror sense of fun about what Green Lung do, and it’s great to see them fully realise the potential they demonstrated at that first Exchange gig to emerge as a world-class metal act.
Read more: Metal & Prog Picks: November 2023
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