Whoever said that we are meant to mellow with age hasn’t listened to Fog, the sixth and latest album from New Zealand’s Lung. Always known for a unique brand of brooding and angular blend of noise rock and post punk, it is as if the passing of the years has given them more to rage about (tell me about it!), and the only way to let it out is through the music.
And so, Lung feels like a howl at the moon, a personal attack on the Gods of Music, an exorcism not just of the band’s own pent-up frustrations but also a side swipe at the conformity and comfort-zoning of current music. And the latter couldn’t come too soon.
“Isolated Gun” sets the stall out nicely, a stall seemingly selling gnarly bass lines and incendiary guitars, sharp industrial-grade sonics and shamanic beats, world-weary vocals, and razor wire music. Not for the faint-hearted, perhaps, but certainly a worthy addition to the music collection for all of those discerning underground music fans who have always mined for treasure in the outer reaches.
“RALPH” adds a kentamine-infused, psychedelic vibe to the mix, a song that coils and crawls towards the listener rather than being delivered in the usual fashion. The title track is less intense, although that’s all relative given the band’s starting point, a mix of early electronica and immersive sounds, at times feeling like The Sisters of Mercy playing on the Titanic as it hits the ocean floor.
And then there are strange entities such as “No Idea Yet,” a piano-led slice of avant-pop that is somehow both a world away from the rest of the album and also an explanation of exactly where the band comes from creatively. (i.e., not anywhere that you can find in the middle of the musical map.)
In many ways, Fog is the natural evolution of punk, had it not just got stuck in a late-seventies loop feeding on itself, the natural result of 50 years of the same energies, the same outsiderness, the same frustrations, all reacting to a world getting increasingly far worse than it was back then. Odd as it might sound, but to those who might feel the same way, Fog feels like catharsis.
