One of the many interesting aspects about tonight’s show is the fact that the audience is, in the main, considerably older than the band. There is a latent desire within a true metalhead's DNA to continually search out the next exciting emerging talent. It is like a form of attention deficit disorder. As soon as an act has penetrated the mainstream, we need to discover whatever is going to succeed.

The vast majority of us shoehorned into Gorilla tonight have been around the block a fair few times, but that doesn't stop us get mightily excited by a band doing something rather special with our precious metal. Green Lung are special because they are simultaneously being reverential and revolutionary. They hark back to the bombastic overlords of 70s and 80s metal but do so in a distinctly granular and grounded fashion that feels manifestly inventive. 

The atmosphere is thick with anticipation and Wigan's very own Boss Keloid are very aware of this. It helps that they are veteran troubadours and are highly skilled at warming up a partisan audience. There is a warmth and geniality to their approach that the rapidly filling room instantly takes to. They get quite lazily lumped in with the sludge fraternity but there is much more nuance and character to what they are doing. This is blues rock but with added welly.

This evening they are quite excellent. They unfold their fuzzy convivial blues in a lethargic manner, they may have limited stage time, but they are not in the collective headspace to be hurried. Instead, there is an unrushed and breezy temperament to their set, and tracks like ‘Smiling Thrush’ and ‘Hats the Mandrill’ are allowed to breathe and blossom at their own pace. By the time they reach ‘Chronosiam’ they have built up an impressive head of steam and an audience reaction that initially registered as curious has now morphed into open adoration. Not bad for an evening's work.

By the time Green Lung emerge Gorilla is a solid mass of people and has transformed into a gigantic sauna. There is no rockstar aesthetic to Green Lung and their members have the air of a trendy Hoxton-dwelling indie combo, as opposed to the hottest ticket in modern metal. Their repurposed sound fuels the imagination. Yes, there are obvious similarities to Ghost with a good number of their tracks being driven by swirling melodic organs reminiscent of the Swedish maestros, but in the hands of Green Lung it all feels much more earthed and organic. 

There are soaring choruses and jaunty ditties aplenty, but they skilfully avoid polished commerciality. Instead, for all its hey nonny-noes, there is a raw unbridled passion to what Geen Lung are doing that makes it feel much more tethered to a sweaty club than a soulless stadium. They are tapping into something quintessentially British, a deep-seated granular pride of our emerald Isles that is nurturing as opposed to Jingoistic. 

Their paganistic intent and obvious disdain for the urbanisation of this country doesn't feel like an act or gimmick, it is a genuine belief and ideology that flows through everything that they do. You can trace their lineage all the way back to the occult heydays of the early 70s and rather than being an exercise in bandwagon jumping you can tell that they are all keen disciples of obscure cult luminaries such as Coven and Black Widow.

There is such a warm evocative feeling to their sound that consumes the whole room. The atmosphere is electric throughout and those crushed together at the front bounce in gleeful unison. They major heavily on the new album, “This Heathen Land”, plying us with all but one of its eight tracks (Prologue doesn’t count, it’s an intro), and the elevation of both their accessibility and ambition is blindingly obvious.

‘Song of the Stones’ is an absolute highlight and illustrates how much they have evolved as a band. Bereft of the self-coined “heavy metal solos” there is a haunting fragility to their stripped-back rhythmic approach that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. The band revel in being pushed this far out of their comfort zone and you get the distinct feeling that there is an appetite to explore further more refined and ethereal sound.

I throw around the term hypnotic, but this truly is a performance that you cannot keep your eyes off. The visual production is audacious in its minimalism, a LED flickers behind their white backdrop creating a sensory-baiting kaleidoscope of colours that brings to mind vintage footage of Pink Floyd in the late 60s. The band are a whirlwind of virtuoso instrumentation, everything is performed with enhanced passion and precision. They live and breathe every note and every syllable of the songs, they give all on that stage draining themselves of all available energy.

‘Let The Devil In’, from a debut record “Woodland Rites”, provides a chaotic and riotous start to the inevitable encore. By this point, the audience has gone through rapture and are somewhere south of euphoric adoration. ‘Graveyard Sun’ provides a more measured and reflectful conclusion, its distinctly maudlin tones bring everything down a peg or two before the inevitable conclusion.

The buzz about Green Lung has been off the scale for quite a while, but tonight they proved beyond doubt that they are worth every single line hyperbole. They weren't just entertaining; they provided a genuine all-consuming performance that left nothing in the locker room. They may not look like archetypal rockers, but this was the best and purest rock show I've seen so far this year.

Check the “In The Flesh” page for more photos!
Green Lung, Boss Keloid