Let Him In

A small series in which I try to sidestep my January blues by any means necessary, Part 4: Satan (slight return, woodland version).

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Sister, you've been told
That making love's a sin
Open up your heart
And let the devil in

There’s something nasty in the wood shred, Green Lung Woodland Rites is by far the best metal LP I have stumbled across in a decade. Lets face it any LP which begins with the line, ‘At the gloaming on Walpurgis night’ is going to float my chalice. But there’s more.

I totally missed Woodland Rites when it was released back in 2018, a mate of mine played it to me one lunch time and I was just suddenly pinned back in my seat by the sheer brilliance and power of the opening couple of tracks. Reader I had bought a copy before the next track had finished.

Something about this unknown album with the brilliant pagan artwork just resonated deep within me. Yes I do love all the evil-doings-in-the-woods vibe as a legacy of growing up in a heavily forested area and watching the Wickerman one too many times, but there’s more. The playing and the songs are absolutely top-notch, really powerful, really melodic and doomy with great tunes but I think the main thing is the performance this LP captures from the band, every track played as though the devil was scratching at your back door*.

Green Lung are from London and they are really heavy, that’s pretty much all I know about them. Now take my hand and let me lead you into the woods, my pretties.

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Woodland Rites is amazing from the off. The instrumental ‘Initiation’ sets us up perfectly, starting gently and then cranking up the juice hurling us into the tale of ‘Woodland Rites’. The way the title track builds is perfection, everything controlled and then released into an excellent guitar solo, it thrills me.

Speaking of selling your soul for cheap thrills** ‘Let The Devil In’ may well be an all-time favourite already. The tune is just immense, appropriately persuasive even, the all-corrupting monarch downstairs targets, umm, the all-corrupting downstairs for his entry point.

Come to the last house on the left of the street
In the red room our circle will meet
Wear nothing more than a long black hood
And a pendant of tannis root

I find myself humming the chorus of this one continually, tunelessly.

‘The Ritual Tree’ is a very atmospheric piece, guitars glide and a deliciously olde English tale of woodland enchantment and skullduggery. There’s something of the story of Blood on Satan’s Claw about this one.

Flip this beast over and gird your loins for high volume tales of covens, knights templar and the queen of the May. The guitar harmonies on ‘Templar Dawn’ are just something else. The band inject some speed into proceedings for ‘Call Of the Coven’ to great affect as it lollops along before hitting you with the best guitar solo on the album.

As befits the subject matter Green Lung serve us up an epic on ‘May Queen’^ and again the playing of all concerned is great, especially John Wright on keys. Closing track ‘Into The Wild’ is even better, the band wearing their early/proto metal influences for all to see, albeit with shades of Wishbone Ash fluttering around the frayed edges of their mythical forest. It is a great declaration of intent.

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Green Lung tap into all manner of British folklore and superstitious dread, their forest is where you’ll meet with an untimely end at the hands of hooded dancers, smoke something nasty with the green man and catch glimpses of an earlier pre-Christian power. I love it.

The band are all excellent players, heavy as sin but never plodding, even when they stretch it out and play slowly. It doesn’t need saying but the rhythm section are superbly good and guitarist Scott Black is equally adept at riffing and soloing. Tom Templar has a particularly good voice, he sells every line as though it might save him; I suspect it won’t, too many Walpurgis nights spent in the stone circle for that.

For all the pastoral touches and doomy riffs Woodland Rites never succumbs to a neat genre category, there is a definite punk touch here and there keeping the solos short and to the point, plus far more attention to the tunes than is typical. Green Lung really seem to have found their own voice.

Now you stand before the sign
Is this all in your mind?
Dancing naked in the night
Won't you join our woodland rites?
Our woodland rites 

Oh go on then, since you ask so nicely.

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The art for Woodland Rites is done by Richard Wells and it really is an integral part of the album. The details in his lino work is amazing and the LP comes with an excellent lyric booklet with even more pictures, plus the compulsory photo of the band standing in the woods.

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Green Lung’s stuff can be a little difficult to source, they release their music via Svart Records in Finland but please hunt it down, you won’t regret it.

1121 Down (in the sacred glade).

PS: This all has a greater resonance for me at the moment as I have just read Robert Holdstock’s extremely dark fantasy novel Mythago Wood and it all chimes somewhat with that vibe. Dark doings amongst the leaf mould.

*cat flaps are a bad idea, Satan-wise. True story.

**warning: terms and conditions may apply. Eternity spent in a fiery field of damnation and unrelenting torment, guaranteed. Please obtain the permission of the one paying the final reckoning, mortal.

^not a tribute to my favourite curly-haired guitar god who wields his homemade axe, but a tale of sacrifice for the good of the crops which ends Wickerman-style: Spoiler Alert^^.

^^damnit, they do go after the thing you’re warning about don’t they?