With producer Tom Dalgety (Opeth, Ghost) at the helm, this time handling everything from recording to mixing, the band decamped to Rockfield Studios in January 2026, following in the muddy footprints of some of their key inspirations, from Black Sabbath to Queen to Judas Priest. Sonically, they were set on capturing their megalithic live sound more accurately than ever – stripping back their usual dense, multilayered arrangements to their rawest, leanest form and recording much of the album live to capture their Sabbathian heaviness, frenzied Hammonds and haunting Mellotrons as faithfully as possible. The result is an album that combines the soaring hookiness of This Heathen Land with an uncompromising rawness and heaviness, and takes the band’s distinctive brand of sonic storytelling to macabre new heights. If, a year after Black Sabbath’s Back to the Beginning show and the death of Ozzy Osbourne, you had any doubts about the future of traditional British metal, Necropolitan will lay them to rest. Here is a band taking the torch from the heavy metal godfathers and running with it, bursting with all the musicianship and storytelling flair that has kept the genre’s flame burning for a half-century, and using it to temper a lyrical and sonic world that is entirely their own. | 
