Wellington noise-rock veterans LUNG return carrying a decades-old DIY, all-ages ethos into a new era.
Wellington has always had a way of making music that feels a little like the weather it’s notoriously known for.
A little dirty, a little windswept, occasionally hostile, but alive in a way where smoothing out the rough edges would almost defeat the purpose.
LUNG fit neatly into that tradition, even if their story begins a little further north.
Emerging from Palmerston North’s underground in the late ’80s before becoming deeply embedded in Wellington, the noise-rock veterans have spent more than three decades building a bass-heavy collision of post-punk, no wave and sheer guitar abuse.
But calling LUNG an important New Zealand band only tells half the story.
Because while plenty of acts help define a scene sonically, considerably fewer help create the places where that scene can actually exist.
Frontman Dave White was there at the beginning of Palmerston North’s The Stomach, serving as its first manager as the space developed into an all-ages venue, rehearsal room and recording studio.
Open since 1988, The Stomach remains an alcohol-free home for local music today.
Which is a bigger deal than it might seem.
All-ages gigs are one of those things that can look minor from the outside, until you remember that nearly every musician, photographer, promoter and obsessive punter starts out being too young to get into a pub.
I’ve always had a soft spot for them. There’s something particularly vital about a room where getting involved in music isn’t dependent on being old enough to buy or drink a schooner.
White’s work didn’t stop there. He later managed Nelson’s multidisciplinary Artery arts centre, before establishing Phat Club and running Phat Festival, extending that same community-minded approach into another generation of independent music spaces.
Which makes LUNG’s new video for ‘Isolated Gun’ feel less like an aesthetic choice and more like second nature.
Alan Beere of TrustFundKid111 knocked the video out at White’s Wellington home, squeezing LUNG and a few friends into the hallway and wrapping the whole shoot in under half an hour.
And it’s fucking cool.
There’s nothing fancy about it, and that’s the charm: three people, one hallway, plenty of noise.
LUNG play. Friends crowd around them. The hallway barely seems big enough to contain the band, let alone Dave White’s guitar when it starts tearing holes through the track.
It’s much less like a music video and more like you’ve walked into the right house on the right night.
That suits ‘Isolated Gun’ perfectly.
Opening Fog, the track comes in on James Woods’ grinding bass and Zak White’s steady drum pulse, before Dave White’s guitar starts ripping through it.
There’s a nice bit of history buried inside it too. The track borrows lyrics from 1991’s ‘She’s Got a Gun’ and the rhythmic backbone of 2024’s ‘Isolation’, marrying two very different eras of LUNG together.
That approach carries across Fog.
Recorded at The Surgery with engineer Lee Prebble, Fog sounds deliberately unpolished — heavy drums, grinding bass and guitars that are allowed to get properly ugly, occupying the kind of frequencies that a more sensible band might have politely removed. The songs regularly feel only a few seconds away from falling apart, which is precisely where LUNG seems happiest.
More importantly, LUNG don’t sound remotely interested in coasting on their history.
LUNG are still releasing records through independent channels, still playing loud, still sharing space with younger underground bands and still approaching music with the same basic proposition that has driven them for decades: you don’t need permission to make something happen.
That might be their most important contribution.
Scenes like Wellington’s punk, noise and alternative underground are often romanticised after the fact. We remember the bands, the records and the particularly feral gigs. Less attention goes to the rehearsal rooms, cheap studios, community halls, all-ages venues and people willing to spend years keeping those doors open.
Without those spaces, there’s no scene to look back on later.
LUNG figured that out early. More than 35 years on, Fog and ‘Isolated Gun’ prove they’re still doing things their own way. A half-hour video shoot in a Wellington hallway might be small-scale, but it says plenty.
Listen to Fog below.
