Tom Templar says This Heathen Land is the record that "made us a live unit." The 2023 album, Green Lung's first for Nuclear Blast, was written ambitiously in the studio, and then the London band had to learn to actually play it, night after night. That meant shows with Clutch and Opeth, a U.S. tour with Castle Rat (also on this Sonic Temple bill), a European run with Unto Others, and eventually a headline slot at Desert Fest in London in spring 2026, which Templar called a big homecoming.
The road work fed straight into Necropolitan, out September 11, 2026. Producer Tom Dalgety had them track drums, bass and rhythm guitar live in the room, and the whole record was done in nine days. Its subject is London's seven Victorian cemeteries, the old Necropolis Railway that carried the dead beneath the city, and Aleister Crowley's muse Alostrael. The band is Templar, Scott Black, Joseph Ghast, J.G. Wright and Matt Wiseman, and they've been at it since the 2018 EP Free the Witch.