Yellow Bike Records – 24th January 2026
Christopher Nosnibor
There’s quite a unique pleasure in learning of a new release by a band you assumed had called it a day long ago – and perhaps did. It’s even sweeter when it’s a band you really dig. And so it is that New Zealand noisemongers Lung have a new album out. It’s taken a while to percolate through to me – which isn’t entirely surprising given that they’re little-known even domestically, let alone on the opposite side of the world.
For context on a personal level, I first encountered Lung in 1992, playing in the upstairs room at The Duke of Wellington in Lincoln. This was before the city had a university or any dedicated venues, meaning proper gigs, were fairly rare. I’d have been sixteen. They were supporting some goth act – possibly Children of a Lesser Groove. Their drummer had experienced visa troubles or something, so they had a stand-in – and they blew me away. I recall them not only being pretty heavy and intense, but also devastatingly loud. When my dad came to pick me up, I had him bring money (I’d spent what little I’d taken on vodka, because it was still possible to get served without ID if you looked like you might be 18), and legged it back into the venue to raid the merch stall, taking home debut album Cactii on CD and the 7” single, ‘Swing’.
A year or so later, I practically creamed my pants on finding 3 Heads on a Plate on vinyl in Track Records in York: I simply had no idea of its existence. This was a long way pre-Internet, and they weren’t the kind of band who would be getting acres of coverage in Melody Maker or NME. I still have all three of these releases, and they still get played, too. These albums have a raw, visceral quality, and a seething darkness pervades them.
Consequently, I was beyond excited to learn about Fog (and during the course of my research for this review to learn of two more albums, released in 2022 and 2024)
Described by founder and frontman, Dave White, as their “most raw, fucked up, brutal, honest work to date”, and “possibly the most punk we’ve become”, Fog was recorded over just two days at The Surgery in Newtown, Wellington, with producer Lee Prebble at the helm, and explores more overtly the underlying punk roots of the band’s core influences.
White isn’t wrong, but it hits like a body slam with opener ‘Isolated Gun’, a thick, sludgy and seriously radical reworking of ‘She’s Got a Gun’ from Cactii where the squally, spindly lead guitar of the original is replaced by a full-on face-melting wall of noise that’s nothing short of devastating. It sets the tone for the album’s twelve tracks, too – and reminds me of that show back in ’92 when they were absolutely pulverising in volume and density. The production here conveys that volume, that grainy, gnarly, low-slung guitar filth. On Fog, not only have Lung lost none of their intensity, but they seem to have channelled years of pent-up rage into a most furious document of everything they were ever about.
The raucous laughter at the end of ‘eXtra Spank’ shows they’ve lost none of their warped humour, but then the album immediately rips into ‘Blue Ai’, a savage roar of noise, which in turn sounds tame besides the raging blitzkrieg of ‘Recycle Man’, and the snarling, gnarly ‘Panda’ is not pretty. ‘Firestarter’ is not a cover, but it is overloading, distorted, riffy and incendiary, with a skin-shredding bass ripping through the bone-breaking climax.
‘TR-UNT’ finds them venturing into the crossover territory of squalling industrial and black metal territory – and gritty noise, the drums being straight up attack, evoking the spirit of Fudge Tunnel, and after the delicate interlude of ‘No Idea Yet’, they conclude the album with the rackatacius ‘Deaf in Both Ears’. It’s nothing short of a guitar-driven blitzkrieg, and Lung at their best.
AA
Aural Aggravation 