very good trip king gizzard

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard bring Armory crowd on a psychedelic trip 

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by Macie Rasmussen and Juliet Farmer

September 04, 2024

When a band has 26 studio albums (and counting) and plays a completely different setlist each night on tour, you never quite know what you’re going to get. At King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s visit to the Armory on Tuesday night, the Australia-based group unleashed an amalgam of surfer rock, metal-infused psychedelia, pop, jazz, funk, and electro-blues music — resulting in a two-and-a-half-hour continuous show full of colorful looping animations and occasional mosh pits. 

King Gizzard shows cater to superfans eager for anything in the catalog. You might hear dystopian ragers and trash metal from Infest the Rats’ Nest . Or, laid-back, acoustic, psychedelic folk from Paper Mâché Dream Balloon . Maybe some boogie and blues rock from Fishing for Fishies . Along with the band's most recent album, Flightb741 , full of feel-good ‘60 and ‘70s-style American rock ‘n roll, they played songs from a dozen different albums.

The six-piece consists of Stu Mackenzie (guitar, lead vocals), Ambrose Kenny Smith (keys, harmonics, synthesizers, vocals), Joey Walker (guitar, vocals), Michael Cavanagh (drums), Lucas Harwood (bass), and Cook Craig (bass, keys, vocals). 

They pull it all together in a dizzying fashion by morphing each song into the next, blending motifs of different songs together during extended jams. The band reused the refrain from “Hypertension,” a song midway through the set, on “Am I In Heaven?” near the end of the show. But they also teased “Am I In Heaven?” during “Cellophane” near the beginning. All that to say, it takes significant talent to maintain that level of synergy for an entire show. 

Many wonder: “Is King Gizzard a “jam band?” Earlier in their career, most songs played live were rehearsed to be true to the studio tracks, but the band has increased improvisation over the years to keep songs fresh and unexpected. All shows on the tour stream on YouTube, and in the rapidly moving live chat section, “Not a jam band” appears repeatedly. Many loyal fans disapprove of the “jam band” label and its association with jam icons, Vermont psych-rockers Phish. Whether you call it “jamming” or something else, King Gizzard used each song on Tuesday as a jumping-off point without a predictable outcome and created a unique experience for fans.

Perhaps one of the most unpredictable aspects of the night was a 40-minute collaborative DJ session that moved from a slower ambient to techno-rave music. Mackenzie, Smith, Walker, Harwood, and Craig centered around an electronic synthesizer table to play improvisational jams of “Theia” and “The Silver Cord” from last year’s electronic album, The Silver Cord . A stomping bass beat was prominent for the first time all evening as Cavanagh drummed along with the others’ bips and bops. Or maybe it was the other way around. With heads down in concentration, the musicians seemed to be in their own worlds. Mackenzie’s vocals were tuned so high that words were unintelligible and alien-like. A book sat in the middle of the table as if they were calling an unearthly being in a spiritual ritual. Soon enough, the band transitioned into “The Grim Reaper,” when Smith rapped to Mackenzie’s flute. 

Because of the show’s continuity, there was not a lot of time for talking, except when the band first took the stage and Walker asked, “Is there a rivalry between Minneapolis and St. Paul?” None of the bandmates had an answer, but one did mention they once played at “Prince’s Place,” which may have been a reference to their shows at Palace Theatre in 2022, or 7th St. Entry in 2015. 

King Gizzard and their fans’ energy climaxed near the end of the night when the band uncaged the hardest-hitting, mosh-inducing tracks. Blaring guitars on “Supercell” and “Motor Spirit” helped the crowd cultivate its own synergy and create a large circle pit. Mackenzie frantically cranked his whammy bar to the scuzzy tunes and propped his guitar on top of his head to amp up the already rowdy energy. 

To preface the inevitable energy, a message on screen before the show said: “As the weirdo swarm grows, we have to work hard to keep our community inclusive. The mosh pit is a safe place for young, old, big, small and ppl of all genders. If you see any d*ckheads, alert security. Look after each other in there and BE YOURSELF.” 

King Gizzard’s transfixing live blend of aggression and transcendence is the band members being experiential, a little goofy, and ultimately, their own selves. They tap into anger in a way that feels nourishing, but also looks inward to reconstruct studio recordings into real life. They take their musicianship seriously, but also give off a “couldn’t care less” mood. Every time you think you have them cornered, they mutate. 

In King Gizzard fashion, Brooklyn-based opener Geese, took some risks. The band’s sophomore album, 3D Country, was released last year. It departed from the post-punk sound of their debut, Projector , to move toward shape-shifting blues-rock. Lead singer Cameron Winter projected yowls and an almost Elvis-like voice. He also spoke to the audience in a (seemingly fake?) Southern accent. Also like the headliner, Geese’s music can be expansive and unpredictable; songs with smoldering guitar riffs, like “2122” often ended with turbulent distortions and flashing lights to match. “Cowboy Nudes” and “I See Myself” from the most recent release added lightheartedness. In the former, Winter sang, “Be my warrior! / Just you and I / Be my warrior! / And I'll be alright” in upbeat optimism, and in the latter, he passionately insisted, “I see myself in you,” again and again. For a band that met in high school a few years ago, Geese is quite promising, and their opening set was a great addition to the night’s line-up. 

Nuclear Fusion

The Reticent Raconteur

The Lord of Lightning

Mystery Jack

Hypertension

Flight b741

The Silver Cord

The Grim Reaper

Magenta Mountain

Plastic Boogie

Am I in Heaven?

Motor Spirit

By the time you read this, King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard will probably have released another album

With 24 albums in just over a decade – and five last year alone – are King Gizzard challenging their fans to process too much music? "I think we are primarily challenging ourselves,” says Stu MacKenzie

Stu Mackenzie, the singer and guitarist at the head of Australian psychedelic rockers King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard, shudders when he thinks back to the global events of 2020 that brought the planet to a standstill.

“Your whole existence is called into question when something like this happens,” he says from his home in Melbourne. “It was an existential threat, because it was like, ‘What is my purpose if not to go play music for other human beings?’”

Given the prolific nature of the band – they’d released a total of 15 albums in the seven years since their 2012 debut, 12 Bar Bruise – it’s hard not to sympathise with their predicament. But King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard are nothing if not hardy souls and so, despite Melbourne experiencing some of the toughest lockdown restrictions in the world, they set about overcoming the dilemma of not being able to make music together. 

Harnessing the power of digital communication, the band met daily via Zoom to exchange ideas, riffs and concepts to “make a record, which sounded like a live band, because that was the thing that we couldn’t do”. Of course, this being King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard, the band remotely made an eyebrow-raising two albums in the shape of KG (2020) and LW the following year and, in the process, upped their studio skills.

“It was like, ‘How do we record a drum kit and make it sound like there’s other instruments in the room, and we actually jammed and played together?’” says Mackenzie. “In trying to do that, we actually had a lot of fun writing songs, and came up with a lot of things that were happy accidents.” He adds: “I mean, this is all I’ve known how to ever do and I just love making music; I love recording music and I love touring. I really, really do.”

Mackenzie’s – and, by extension, the rest of the band – love of his craft has come into full evidence once again. With the group reunited at last, their flurry of creative activity and continual desire to keep moving forward saw them releasing no fewer than five – count ’em - albums by the end of last year and more are planned. Made In Timeland – originally envisaged as intermission music during their increasingly marathon shows and developed into two 15-minute tracks of electronic influences harnessed by a 60bpm tempo – was followed a month after its March release by the full-length Ominum Gatherum , an album that jettisoned King Gizzard’s usual conceptual modus operandi to jump around a variety of genres including psychedelia, prog, krautrock and funk, thus making it an excellent entry point for neophytes.

Total Guitar magazine hailed  Ominum Gatherum track The Dripping Tap – an 18min+ psychedelic guitar freakout – as their track of the year.

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But they were only just getting started. Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava takes its cues from Can’s cut-up studio techniques gleaned from extended jams and sonic explorations, while Changes – a project that’s taken them almost five years to complete – finds the band basing every song around the same chord changes while oscillating between two very different scales. Oh, and then there was Laminated Denim , which eagle-eyed readers will spot as being an anagram of Made In Timeland . 

And out now is PetroDragonic Apocalypse; Or, Dawn Of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth And The Beginning Of Merciless Damnation , their 24th album. 

A comment under the YouTube video for their song Hate Dancin' (below) jokes: "It's been 5 days since they last released any new music – was starting to think we'd never hear anything from them again."

But with such a head-spinning amount of music being released in a relatively short time period, isn’t there a danger that King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard are overly challenging their fans to absorb and process an incredible amount of information? 

“I think we are primarily challenging ourselves,” counters Mackenzie. “But I think that is an interesting way to frame it, though, because – and maybe it’s not something that I’ve even really thought about – I definitely do spend a lot of time thinking about our fans, because I just feel so grateful that literally anybody wants to listen to our music or come to a show.”

Pondering the band’s ever-expanding output, he continues: “I feel like, for me, recording something, collaborating with other people, finishing it, and then releasing it to a point where you can’t touch it or change it ever again, it feels like a purge; it feels really good when it’s done. And it feels like you can clear space. In my mind, it’s like emptying trash. And that’s always been my personal way of like being able to move on or being able to grow or change.”

And yet there remains a form of self-awareness within the band about applying quality control methods to what gets released and what stays in the can – along with a tip from a seemingly unlikely source. “My mother-in-law told me this trick,” reveals Mackenzie, “She said, ‘When you’re reading a book, you subtract your age from 100. And that’s how many pages you need to read until you know that it’s worth finishing the book.’ And I was like, do you know what? There’s something deep in that that I actually really, really like. So I still use that specific trick. I think there’s a version of that that applies to any kind of thing in life and I think with making records, I now know a little sooner than I used to about what’s working and what isn’t.”

By his own admission, King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard rarely have less than two projects on the go at any given time. And that’s when they’ve managed to ascertain what’s what and what’s going where.

“We always have a lot of demos going,” smiles Mackenzie. “And a lot of them are just super-loose. Sometimes I don’t even know that two of them are going to end up on the same record. But sometimes I think that two that are going to be on the same record are actually going to be on two different records. Because, you know, the way they kind of evolve, and they’re going to diverge, or they’re going to join up or whatever.”

Coupled with King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard’s huge back catalogue is their massive touring schedule. So how easy or difficult is it for them to actually put a setlist together?

“It’s actually become really fun doing that,” says Mackenzie. “When the band started, it was very loose; it was kind of improvised because we just didn’t have very many songs. And that was really fun, but we got to a point where that got very boring. We kind of hit this wall where it was like, ‘Oh, shit, we need to learn our back catalogue!’ And we spent the better part of a year with most of our rehearsals dedicated to that rather than making new music and that sucked.

When you’re reading a book, you should subtract your age from 100. That’s how many pages you need to read until you know that it’s worth finishing the book. Stu MacKenzie

“Anyways, now the sets are loose and free and changing every night. We’re pulling from about 100 songs and playing 16 or 18 a night. Each soundcheck we’d be running through songs that we just had no idea how to play and trying to remember the chords and stuff. So we’re seriously on the edge of what we can do onstage. But we’re having a lot of fun. I think people are vibing on it. And we’re getting good energy from the shows. So yeah, we’re gonna keep playing like this until it feels like we should do something else. The shows have never been so improvised. It’s very fun.”

Fun is precisely what beats at the heart of their oeuvre, alongside an increasing maturity that helps the band navigate potentially choppy waters.

“I love the way that the interplay between six people is so complex,” says Mackenzie. “It’s just a great little nucleus for creativity having that many people working in tandem. It’s really cool when it works.”

PetroDragonic Apocalypse; Or, Dawn Of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth And The Beginning Of Merciless Damnation is out now via KGLW. See their website for more information

Julian Marszalek is the former Reviews Editor of The Blues Magazine. He has written about music for Music365, Yahoo! Music, The Quietus, The Guardian, NME and Shindig! among many others. As the Deputy Online News Editor at Xfm he revealed exclusively that Nick Cave’s second novel was on the way. During his two-decade career, he’s interviewed the likes of Keith Richards, Jimmy Page and Ozzy Osbourne, and has been ranted at by John Lydon. He’s also in the select group of music journalists to have actually got on with Lou Reed. Marszalek taught music journalism at Middlesex University and co-ran the genre-fluid Stow Festival in Walthamstow for six years.

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Inside the Cult of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard

The band marvel at the "North American phenomenon" of devout fans who follow them on the road

Photo: Maclay Heriot

BY Isabel Glasgow Published Aug 6, 2024

In 2019, it felt weird to see King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard two nights in a row. Living in Ottawa at the time, travelling to Toronto or Montreal to see a concert was a common occurrence — but visiting both cities felt frivolous.

Three years later, I'd do it again, tacking on Detroit, plus two nights at Colorado's Red Rocks Amphitheatre. On the train back home to Toronto, I won tickets to two shows at Austin's LEVITATION festival, and soon after, was counting down to six more in Colorado and Chicago. When I share my upcoming run, people assume exaggeration, and when tour friends text "six nights in Lithuania and Bulgaria?" I roll my eyes — but consider it for a moment.

What sounds like a swift descent into madness or preface for a cult escape thinkpiece is actually pretty standard behaviour for a passionate King Gizzard fan. Why I and many others readily spend a month's rent on dozens of concert tickets is difficult to pinpoint, and something that escapes the Melbourne rock band's comprehension as well.

"Hell no!" exclaims singer-guitarist Stu Mackenzie when I ask if he had ever expected the Grateful Dead-esque fandom surrounding the band. Speaking by phone on the eve of the summer solstice, his wide-eyed gratitude is palpable as he pieces together the puzzle.

I understand his disbelief. Following King Gizzard to cities I have trouble placing on a map was more of a culture that absorbed me at its onset than a conscious lifestyle choice. "It was definitely not part of the game plan. I mean, I'm not sure we ever really had a solid game plan," admits Mackenzie.

A dozen years and more than twice as many albums into King Gizzard's career, it's understandable he hasn't had much time to pause and reflect on the band's ascent, especially when its driving force seems to be chaos. Is a game plan necessary when you've exceeded your expectations just by enjoying the ride?

About 10 years before my first King Gizzard show, the band were gearing up for their first-ever performance — but it was far from their first time making music together. As teens in the Melbourne suburb of Geelong, frontman Mackenzie, bassist Lucas Harwood and guitarist Cook Craig played in several pre-Gizzard groups, with Deniliquin-born drummer Michael "Cavs" Cavanagh joining by audition. Mackenzie met guitarist Joey Walker in university in Melbourne, and King Gizzard soon took shape. Multi-instrumentalist Ambrose Kenny-Smith — former bandmate of Harwood, now frontman of side-project the Murlocs alongside Craig on bass — joined after catching an early show, enthralled by their energy. Many wildly prolific years later, it's their camaraderie that has kept the band tight.

On their latest barnburner, Flight b741 (out August 9), it seems that King Gizzard have finally let themselves bask in their hard-earned success without losing any momentum. Harkening back to '70s country rock, it soars and swoops between the highs and lows of hog-wild hedonism, using some truly bonkers imagery of crashing planes and pigs that fly to chronicle their life on the road. It makes sense the album arrives days before their fall North American tour.

"It definitely is a North American phenomenon," says Mackenzie of the band's loyal following. "It's been really amazing for us to witness it play out in real time over the years. We were never a band who were trying to tap into something like that. We didn't grow up with any form of jam band culture around us in Australia, and that notion of catching a band multiple times was very unusual. I suppose maybe a superfan would do it, but you wouldn't expect different sets."

The musicians have a sense of culture shock about the community that now surrounds them. "It's definitely very overwhelming when we go to America now. Sometimes I forget, and then I'll be caught off guard in a supermarket before the show," says Kenny-Smith over Zoom from his home in Melbourne. The band's fan base continues to grow in both number and intensity, and a largely peaceful community can quickly pivot to unwanted competition if chances at a front-row spot or limited-edition merch feel threatened.

But this element of fan culture isn't unique to King Gizzard — it surrounds many artists of comparable size, its magnitude intensified post-lockdowns, as the loss of live music made its return more precious. In the end, it's all for the music — the intensity around it a testament to its importance.

While King Gizzard have grown rapidly, that hasn't prevented the members from pursuing other projects — it's just made the balance more delicate. "It's a struggle to get in energy and focus," says Kenny-Smith of the Murlocs, who have also grown in popularity. "Once it gets momentum, it has to stop and go back to Gizzard. I've always kept it going on the side because I get those extra kicks of creativity out of it and those guys. It's not as intense, and there's not as much attached to it, so it's a nice change and a walk in the park in some senses. I'm quite proud of myself for keeping both things juggled for 13 years."

And he should be: Murlocs tours are infrequent and often tacked on to the end of King Gizzard's massive tours, giving Kenny-Smith and Craig more weeks on the road, but not necessarily a break for the others.

"Albums will be made with whoever is around," says Kenny-Smith. "It seems like whenever Murlocs tour, the guys will go and make a metal album." (Why metal? We joke that it's because the softies aren't there.)

King Gizzard's endless creativity isn't kept to themselves; it spills far beyond their music, inspiring artists of every sort into offshoot work. "In some ways, it's the most remarkable and significant part of the whole thing," shares Mackenzie in awe. "Seeing that become its own ecosystem is insane. We've always tried to find that sweet spot of trying to genuinely be influenced by that: trying to be part of it, not separate from it, just encourage it all to be one. It's inspiring and the kind of thing that keeps us going. It's a little feedback loop — it's beautiful!"

His words hold true: my first photo pit experience was for King Gizzard, and, months later, my pipe dream of photographing Red Rocks became reality. I had shivers peeking up from stage level at 10,000 fans above me, and deep gratitude to the band for this place in their artistic orbit for a moment.

King Gizzard's artistic world is already multimedia as it is, with Jason Galea's album art, live visuals and tour posters as intrinsic to the band as their music is.

"Jason's the best — full stop!" beams Kenny-Smith, recounting a tight friendship that started when they were teenagers and now finds them skateboarding around the world during downtime on tour. "We've seen many cities in different ways than how others in the band and crew have seen them. He's over the moon and still pinches himself that he's able to draw whatever the hell he wants. Nobody makes him change anything."

Though Mackenzie is undeniably King Gizzard's lead creative force, he holds no power over his bandmates, who've all become multi-instrumentalists on stage and in the studio.

"Stu has always been open to letting anyone throw in their two cents," says Kenny-Smith. "He's one of the best musicians around, so it can be intimidating, but he's so warm and welcoming. As our friendship grows into a big brotherhood, it makes everything easier. It keeps me productive and without any chips on my shoulder, or a voice in my head telling me I suck — because there's a guy telling me I don't suck as much!"

While the band have grown more collaborative and have always been defined by their eccentric, livewire energy, their freak flag has rarely soared as high as on Flight b741 .

"A lot of the time, how the next record sounds has to do with the way we feel," Mackenzie explains — so clearly, King Gizzard are feeling pretty great. "The last handful of releases had a lot of deeper, more serious topics — more conceptual records that required a lot of planning. I'm so up for that, but it was time to do something that felt more instinctual and free. Those records were kind of stressful to make; this one's pure dopamine in the studio."

As evident by their eclectic discography, King Gizzard's collective music taste is pretty broad, enabling their customary genre-hopping, and granting breadth within each exploration. But sometimes, it's clear when an album is right up someone's alley. "It was refreshing to know that Stu wanted to go back to basics and do three-to-four-minute songs" says Kenny-Smith, whose flair is blues and country. "That's all I wanna do: that straight-to-the-point, simpler-the-better, put-forward-with-heart-and-soul kind of music. But they're never gonna be too normal!"

Flight b741 dives into classic rock, but it might be the most comprehensively King Gizzard album yet: its inspiration is their own musical joyride, and their exuberance feels intuitive. "When you look at what's playing in the green room before the show, it's more often than not this kind of music," says Mackenzie. "We talked about some influences, but not a huge amount. With this one, we just went in without preconceived notions, played together, and this was what naturally came out."

Even 26 albums in, it's never quite that easy. Whether King Gizzard are honouring their heroes or aiming to join their ranks, having the gumption to try says a lot.

"It was hectic in the sense that we didn't really have any ideas," says Kenny-Smith, who attributes the album's "big, raw party in a ranch" energy to its lawlessness, which also made recording a challenge. The full band gathered to record harmonized backing vocals and a day's work turned into weeks, Mackenzie realizing, "We actually needed to choreograph the whole album," positioning everyone carefully to get the proper volume and balance. Some of those vocals include debuts from Cavanagh ("He needs to do audiobooks!" laughs Kenny-Smith) and Harwood, plus some impressive pig snorts. "I've gotta encourage everyone to bring out their inner swine," says Kenny-Smith. They were in hog heaven.

Flight b741 is bound to become even more unhinged live, where the looseness of their frenzied garage punk roots has unfurled into winding jams. It's contentious whether King Gizzard have become a jam band or simply a band that jams , or if they've morphed into either at all.

At their onset, they played different sets every night because they didn't want to practice; now, they meticulously plan vastly different sets to cover their massive catalogue, still sounding effortlessly loose. As for practicing? It's more necessary than ever: Harwood has shared some endearing Instagram Stories thanking YouTube tutorials, or revealing that his own songs appeared in his Spotify Wrapped.

"I like being a performer, but when you get out of playing the same set every night, you activate a different part of the brain," says Mackenzie. "Not better, just different. You feel more like a musician than a performer, and that's the part of my brain that feels more in line with what I want to do with music."

With so much music, it seems natural that King Gizzard would progress this way, but Mackenzie credits this to his tour-following fans. "I think they started to see something in us that we didn't see," he explains. "It's taken us to a place we never expected to go, and challenged us in new and exciting ways." That feedback loop in action, once again.

By taking 2014's "The River" down different streams, or detouring a microtonal track into teases of others, the band and fans stay invigorated — a necessity when both have a long run of shows ahead.

"It's much easier to do different things instead of trying to top something you've already done," says Mackenzie of the band's zig-zagging discography. "I think the goal is to create, and it should end there, rather than to create with any form of comparison in mind. If you're constantly trying to do something different, then whatever you do is fine, since you've deliberately put yourself in a place where you don't have to compare it to anything else you've done."

While King Gizzard's genre-hopping can seem zany — or gimmicky, to a cynic — it's emblematic of a deep love of music, as they dive into all its forms with curiosity and care. Admiring the band's timeline goes hand in hand with nostalgia for different periods, so I ask if they feel the same. "I think I've grown to respect the eras," says Mackenzie, who feels nostalgic, but sees each album as a product of its time of creation. Recording I'm in Your Mind Fuzz (2014) and Quarters! (2015) in Upstate New York was a "beautiful, picturesque period" to Kenny-Smith. "We'd play Brooklyn once a week, record in the basement, get bagels at the supermarket, and go for walks," he says. "All that stuff felt so wide-eyed, being near New York in our early 20s."

Those sessions marked King Gizzard's first time in North America, and, in a few weeks, they'll make their umpteenth return, bringing their past to a point beyond their imagination. "Being able to incorporate songs from more than a decade ago is really cool," says Mackenzie, who feels there's still much more to revisit. "If we stopped making music after this record — which of course, we wouldn't — we could fill the rest of our lives with tours that feel different. There'd be songs in the back catalogue we've forgotten about to come back to a long time after they were written."

For now, King Gizzard are moving forward the way they always have: revelling in the current moment and seeing where it takes them, amazement at each unexpected turn. "It's the best job in the world," says Kenny-Smith, with deep sincerity. "All the guys are super supportive of what everyone does. It's a great infrastructure we have going."

What really pulled me into King Gizzard's world six years ago — and around the world on their tour — was the adrenaline driving their eccentricity and freedom: in their music, the live show, and the passion required to make it all happen. This ethos is laid bare on Flight b741 track "Le Risque," as Mackenzie sings that "this world, it spins too slow / Its tempo paints my world in grey / My heart cannot beat fast enough / The risk is technicolour paint."

"Sometimes it's good to stop and think, 'Actually, what is the game plan?'" laughs Mackenzie. "Honestly, I think the game plan is to keep the train on the tracks. If we're doing that, then we're winning. All these crazy things that happen — they don't happen because you set a goal five years ago. It's because you keep putting pen to paper, and if you stay on the tracks, you'll eventually end up somewhere. Even though we've been so fortunate to build this career for ourselves in the music business, it feels like you're constantly about to be derailed. I'm terrified of having a normal job."

Kenny-Smith says with a laugh, "I guess that's why we keep making albums — to stay relevant!"

The arrival of a new King Gizzard album begs the obvious question: what's next? But I hesitate to ask. On Flight b741 , they seem too at ease to be pushed into the next thing — plus, they've earned their own celebration. Instead, I choose another obvious remark: that I can't wait to see them at the next show.

"North America is so vast, and just a place I love touring," says Mackenzie with wonder. "It's the best! I'm very glad to have played a small part in facilitating you getting out and seeing the world in all its colours."

More King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard

• King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard Announce New Album 'Flight b741'
• King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard Book 2024 North American Tour
• King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard Are at Their Freakiest Frequency on 'The Silver Cord'

August 21, 2024

King gizzard and the lizard wizard, september 13, 2024, latest coverage.

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Music Reviews

Here's the deal with king gizzard & the lizard wizard, the band expertly weaponizes niche — again — on 'petrodragonic apocalypse'.

Matthew Perpetua

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard's latest album is the metal-forward PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation . Jason Galea/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard's latest album is the metal-forward PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation .

Among the surest ways to feel out of the loop right now is to look at concert listings and notice that artists you've never heard — or even heard of — are somehow big enough to play very large venues. These days, it's a revelation that can strike without warning, no matter who you are or how closely you keep up with music. The streaming ecosystem has created the ideal conditions for lucky niche artists to grow their audience without leaving a cultural bubble, and there are so many cultural bubbles to go around that a few are bound to exclude you.

The Australian band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard is a prime example: an act with no hits and modest media coverage who nevertheless commands multi-night runs at amphitheaters throughout the United States: Red Rocks. The Hollywood Bowl. Forest Hills Stadium. That it comfortably shares those spaces with household names is even more impressive considering its own name, a mouthful of internal rhyme so egregiously silly that plenty of music critics, curators and journalists still disregard its existence entirely.

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The key to understanding the King Gizzard phenomenon is a willingness to imagine disparate categories in dense overlap, well beyond anything our post-genre pop era might have prepared us for. The group's six musicians live at the center of a very unlikely Venn diagram: stylistic chameleons on par with Beck and Damon Albarn, prolific at a rate that outpaces even the famously hyper-productive Guided By Voices, mounting completely unpredictable live shows with the jam band ethos of Phish. Led by 32-year-old primary songwriter Stu Mackenzie, they have released 24 studio albums since 2010, five of which dropped in 2022. (Two of those, the MGMT-ish Omnium Gatherum and the groovy jazz-fusion opus Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms, and Lava , are good entry points for the uninitiated.) The records tend to be organized around genre and musical high concepts — garage rock, various flavors of psychedelia, electronic excursions, prog, blue-eyed soul and several albums exploring the possibilites of microtonal tuning.

The band's latest, PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation , is its second foray into full-on thrash metal. As it did on style predecessor Infest the Rats' Nest from 2019, the group uses the genre and its traditional obsession with death and destruction as a vehicles for envisioning climate disaster — and resulting class warfare as the wealthy attempt to escape.

"Converge," a particularly brutal cut from the new album, splits its perspective between MacKenzie embodying the fury of nature itself as he describes "a storm of unparalled fright" in a low growl, and multi-instrumentalist Ambrose Kenny-Smith's falsetto refrains standing in for humanity. Once it has established the destruction of civilization as a given, the record ups the ante by bringing witchcraft and enormous rampaging dragon monsters into the narrative. All the over-the-top action-movie fun, however, is balanced with real-life dread, the tone carefully pitched to avoid winking away the seriousness of actual impending catastrophe for the sake of a thrill.

What's perhaps most remarkable about PetroDragonic Apocalypse is how fully and authentically King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard inhabits the target aesthetic. A first-time listener might reasonably peg it as the work of a full-time metal band, studied in the teachings of Slayer and Megadeth. This ability to operate in any of its chosen lanes with maximum commitment, sincerity, and raw skill may be the exact reason the group has been able to grow its audience so steadily. Each new record works like an episode of an ongoing serial, presenting the musicians' ceaseless whims, experiments and reinventions as the elements of a grand adventure. (Case in point: Petrodragonic Apocalypse is only the first of a two-parter about climate anxiety, the chaotic yin to a forthcoming yang in a yet-to-be-revealed genre.)

And for the listeners, King Gizzard's instinct to burn through ideas as quickly as possible has its own odd but undeniable benefit: permission, rare among superfandoms, to care only about the creative excursions that suit their own tastes. When new material is in constant and diverse supply, the stakes get a little lower, and a drastic change in direction feels like less of a betrayal. In other words, if you're not feeling the group in Metallica mode, you can rest easy knowing it'll probably come back around to, say, funky psychedelia before too long.

• King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard Talk ‘Joyous’ New Album and Why Australia Keeps Rocking

By Jonathan Cohen

Jonathan Cohen

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It’s already the most prolific band you’ve heard of but never listened to, but after 18 wildly different albums in a decade, Australia’s King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is still just getting warmed up. On the heels of two loud and unusual LPs written in the decidedly non-Western microtonal tuning, King Gizzard’s latest release, “Butterfly 3000,” marks a radical shift toward smile-inducing songs built on synth arpeggios, danceable beats and honest-to-goodness singalong choruses.

The new album arrives just as King Gizzard is having something of a moment in the U.S. Long a reliable ticket-seller in clubs and theaters thanks to its high-energy, anything-goes set lists, the group is making the leap to larger venues such the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, Calif., and Red Rocks outside Denver, where two October 2022 shows billed as “three-hour marathon sets” recently sold out in two days.

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Since its maiden 2014 U.S. tour, which saw the band jump from the 280-capacity Baby’s All Right to opening for Mac DeMarco at a sold-out Terminal 5, “there has never been anything remotely conventional to King Gizzard’s approach to touring,” says Panache Booking’s Michelle Cable, who has booked the band in North America since that first tour and began managing them worldwide in early 2020. “Before I knew it, here we are selling out two nights at Red Rocks in less than 48 hours, mostly via the band’s own pre-sale. It’s phenomenal.”

Popular on Variety

“America is still my favorite place to tour,” Gizzard frontman Stu Mackenzie tells Variety . “I don’t think we’ve had any specific moment or break or anything. I think it’s been a really nice, gradual slow build stepping on all of the rungs of the ladder.” Those rungs have included releasing five albums alone in 2017, creating a sanctioned “Bootlegger” program to allow fans to press and release their own distinctive versions of King Gizzard music and winning over dubious hard rock gatekeepers with the vintage thrash metal homage “Infest the Rat’s Nest,” a 2019 concept album warning of impending environmental collapse. But when the COVID-19 pandemic struck and Gizzard’s six members found themselves unable to jam in the same room, their new music began to take on a very different flavor.

“When the first few songs started to come together, they had this positive, joyous feel,” says Mackenzie. “We haven’t made a lot of music like that, at least not for a long time. Gizzard has leaned on darker textures a lot over our career, and that’s something I know how to do. It felt a lot more challenging to focus on uplifting textures and sounds. Maybe it was because the world was, and particularly still is, kind of depressing. Maybe there’s some escapism in that, which is also usually not how I’d approach writing either.”

Inspired by using synth loops to create interstitial music for the 2020 concert film “Chunky Shrapnel,” Mackenzie spent “hours and hours and hours” programming sequences in strange time signatures on a series of Moogs and then jamming live alongside them. Forced to record their parts in isolation, Gizzard’s other members learned on the fly and even contributed lyrics to flesh out the album’s themes of dreams, transformations, states of consciousness and metamorphosis.

The album’s centerpiece is the fist-pumping, major-key “Interior People,” with words by multi-instrumentalist Joey Walker. “When he sent me the lyrics, I was like, ‘Are you OK?,’” Mackenzie says with a laugh. “He had this idea for ‘interior people’ before anything was written. He was like, ‘I want to talk about the people that live inside you. The ideas that are inside you, and how they can change you. How you fear them. I want to transcend that and surrender.’”

Alongside Tame Impala, Pond, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, Gang Of Youths, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever and others, King Gizzard is part of an increasingly vibrant scene of Australian rock bands aiming to push forward the concept of guitar-based music on a worldwide scale. Mackenzie says there is a definite camaraderie between the groups, and that the Tame Impala/Pond camp in particular feels “like kindred spirits. Australians are proud of their rock history, maybe more than any other country in the world. I think it encourages guitar music. Melbourne is a very active and supportive music city, and there are a lot of venues per capita here.”

Although the ongoing pandemic means King Gizzard won’t be performing outside of Australia through the end of the year, the group has something special planned for local fans at the end of August: five thematic concerts at Sydney’s Carriageworks, broken down into individual acoustic, “jams,” microtonal, garage rock and heavy metal sets. And without revealing details, Mackenzie confirms there will be more Gizzard music released in 2021. “We do have other things in the pipeline, but it’s kind of unclear even to me exactly what that will be yet,” he says. “There’s a few projects we’ve been chipping away at for a while that we just need to wrap up.”

For now, he’s content that “Butterfly 3000” is “a record you can put on at a dinner party and people aren’t going to be like, ‘Yo, can you turn this off?’ We’ve made a lot of that music already.”

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• A Beginner's Guide into the Gizzverse

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard: A Beginner's Guide into the Gizzverse

This ain’t your typical hitchhiker’s guide. King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard takes you on way more than just a journey from A to B. We're celebrating Gizzard's largest Texas show yet with this list of 10 pivotal moments and albums in the band's career, taking them from dive bars to stadiums - and beyond!

Forget even having a destination in mind—since forming in 2010, this band has been changing their own path over and over again like a shooting star of firey space gas from millennia ago. 

Since then they have released over 20 albums and show no signs of stopping the ride. So, as you can imagine, we’re not going to touch on every album on here. However, we do encourage everyone to hop in the car that is King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard and make their own memories through the Gizzverse. Just let us be your trip sitter into the beautiful chaos of this ever-evolving band. Starting with their first album and ending with the recently-released Levitation Box Set that features Live in Chicago ‘23 and Demos Vol. 5 & Vol. 6 —you’re in for a wild ride.  

WILLOUGHBY'S BEACH

So first off, let’s dive right into their 2011 debut Willoughby’s Beach . This album is a very very calm way to start with these otherwise chaotic boys. It shows their roots coming from the desire to just hang with friends, have fun, and make music. This album portrays them as young surf punks, beach garage rockers… But don’t get attached to that. 

“Black Tooth” King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard from Willoughby’s Beach

FLOAT ALONG - FILL YOUR LUNGS

Now, let’s skip to 2013 with Float Along - Fill Your Lungs . Here is your first taste of the trippy psychedelic waves of sound that are to grow and get stronger as the Gizzverse expands. The beachy rock vibes from their debut have almost vanished completely and now otherworldly essences seem to be in play. This is the album that first got fans puzzling over what could possibly come out next from this King.

“30 Past 7” King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard from Float Along - Fill Your Lungs

“Cellophane” King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard from I’m In Your Mind Fuzz

I'M IN YOUR MIND

Here we take another time-jump and head to their 2014 album I’m In Your Mind Fuzz . By this album, it feels like they have full-heartedly figured out exactly who King Gizzard is and are unafraid to express it. This is the album that officially solidified their seat on the psych-rock throne. 2014 also marked the year they made their North American debut, playing Austin Psych Fest to a packed early crowd. That set is captured as disc one of our Live at Levitation release!

Another year later and we’re at Paper Mâché Dream Balloon. This is their version of an “acoustic” album. But this isn’t your neighborhood sad boy bedroom music. This album is still just as groovy as the King demands his Gizzverse to be and even includes some fantastic wind instruments.  

“Trapdoor” King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard from Paper Mâché Dream Balloon

NONAGON INFINITY 

Their next album, Nonagon Infinity in 2016 was probably what really set their name in the stars. This album is so perfect in the sense that you can start it anywhere and listen to it on a loop and it will always tell you a magical story. It’s a little darker, a little more intricate, and a whole lot more in-your-face.  The band celebrated the release of the album at LEVITATION 2016 - not the way anyone expected after the festival was cancelled due to severe weather, but instead becoming the MVPs of the weekend headlining two showcases at Barracuda (RIP) for a grateful and insanely hyped crowd. A compilation of those sets is DISC TWO of  their  Live at Levitation  release!

“Robot Stop” King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard from Nangon Infinity

POLYGONDWANALAND

Album number 12 was a milestone not just musically, but also a game changer for the band's ever-expanding universe of fans, and was announced  November  14, 2017  by the band with epic news:  "This album is FREE. Free as in, free".  Released under an open source license—the band uploaded the master tapes online for anyone to freely use and launched their Bootlegger series opening up a world of recordings and releases. It's been a genius move from the band, giving fans (including us!) a chance to create their own versions of releases, and giving them a stake in the band's musical universe. It's hard to say if that's the moment that took the band on the path they're now on, but it certainly seems to have helped.

After being released by 88 labels worldwide in 188 different variants they announced an 'official Flightless pressing' of Polygondwanaland. We've lost count of how many pressings there are now!

FLYING MICROTONAL BANANA

Then in 2017, they stuff a banana in the gas pipe of their norm and released Flying Microtonal Banana —an album completely recorded in microtonal. Which basically means that they played “in-between” the typical 12 notes of Western society music. “Out of tune,” some closed-minded American guitarist might say, but arranged properly and you get this transcendental beauty of an album. 

Now, we’re about to skip a lot of REALLY AWESOME albums that they released in 2017-2018, but this is a beginner’s guide, remember? The isn’t a guide to every album, so we encourage you to go back and check them out yourself, but for now… On to 2019!

INFEST THE RATS' NEST

Here, we’re making a stop at their first thrash metal album Infest The Rats’ Nest. This is just a sick album, like, in all the history of music ever existing—we’re including whatever rocks and trees cavemen were banging on to make a melody. If you don’t like metal, then you probably won’t agree with us, but it also makes an urgent statement about ecological disaster we think any Gizz fan would agree with. 

“Planet B” King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard from Infest The Rats’ Nest

OMNIUM GATHERUM

Again, we’re going to make a big hop over some magical albums, even skipping over the pandemic, to go straight to 2022 with the album Omnium Gatherum . Now here is an album that has a song for every music fan. Here the King is announcing to the Gizzverse that yes, he is the master of psychedelic rock and ominous tales told through melody, but he is also an ever-expanding being. They hit pop, rock, rap, and then some. It’s honestly epic AF.

Also in 2022, they released Changes , which was another turn down an unknown road on the ride for King Gizzard. Here they created a catchy R&B-inspired album that’s sexy, groovy, and perfect to dance with your honey to. This album makes you think that maybe the King Gizzard found his Queen Lizard Wizard.

“Hate Dancin’” King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard from Changes

LIVE AT RED ROCKS '22

Finally, we end on their unfathomably epic live album recorded at the band's 3 nights at the iconic Red Rocks Amphitheater. This album showcases one of the best bands on the planet doing their thing over 86 tracks!

This marks the moment in the time when the band went from psych rock cult band to a rock music institution. At that point, it was undeniable, Gizzard has transcended genre and their influences to become one of the biggest - and in our opinion one of the best - bands on the planet.  We took on the ambitious project of pressing this Bootlegger release to vinyl, and while the splatter version is sold out you can still grab one of the last of the 12xLP boxset Neon Half and Half pressings here:   HERE !

WHAT'S NEXT???

Who knows what's next for Gizzard. Breezy folk? A synth masterpiece? Another trash metal banger like their latest  2023 release  PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or Dawn of Eternal?  Whatever it is, y ou can bet we'll be there!  We've jumped into the Gizz wormhole and we're never coming out.  Following the Red Rocks boxset we've got two brand new ones for you in the shop :  Live in Chicago ‘23 which captures the essence of what their live set is like— and Demos Vol. 5 & Vol. 6 , which feels more like a gift from the band to fans, because now you get that little extra good-good to show off to your friends. “Oh, you think you’re a Gizz fan?? Do YOU have this album? I don’t think so.” Anyways, hopefully, we have well prepared you for your long never-ending and ever-evolving ride that is your newfound fandom of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. Welcome to the Gizzverse, my friend. Buckle up.z

Hope to see you at their 3 Hour Marathon set next year in Austin - NOV 15, 2024! Grab tickets HERE .

by ELENA CHILDERS

King gizzard.

New: Live In Chicago 2023 and Demos Vol. 5 + Vol. 6 available as pre-order! 

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• Editor’s Choice

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Flight b741

Aug 13 Album Reviews The Needle Drop

Hi, everyone. Airthony Planetano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard album, Flight B741 .

Here we have the 26th full-length LP from the boundary pushing, versatile and prolific Australian rock outfit, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. In the past 14 years, this band has been able to amass the hardcore fan base and output that usually only bands twice their age have. But when you actually look at the group's very creative and big picture holistic approach to writing and album craft, it's not hard to see why they would have the listener base that they do.

I mean, winding back to their early previous albums, the band could have easily stayed some random Melbourne lo-fi psych-garage outfit. There's certainly a scene down there for it. But instead, later down the road, they expanded more into folk music, into progressive rock, metal, pop, jazz funk soul, microtonal music, narrative-based concepts, and more recently, electronics, too. The band is currently at a point where it seems like they're heading into each new project with some new, fresh angle, and that is also very much the case for Flight B741 .

As there are a couple of things to note here: One, I think a lot of fans will feel like the music this time around sees the band going back to their roots a little bit as we are getting 10 tracks of vintage golden age rock and roll music music that sounds like it was recorded or conceived in the late '60s, early '70s, but this time around with a specifically Southern American twist. Think of the Allman Brothers Band or Canned Heat or even CCR, classic rock outfits that have a bit of a rustic twang to their demeanor - a vibe on this record that is only enhanced by the gospel-inspired group vocals and chord progressions on the opening track, as well as on "Antarctica", which has a groovy backbone to it that sounds like something lifted out a New Orleans funk LP, something very Meters-esque, but with a psychedelic twist and big group vocals, too.

There are a couple of other things that make this a special record in the band's catalog. The vocals - as, I guess, this time around, the band is encouraging members that don't usually get a whole lot of mic time to step up and take the lead, which you can hear most specifically on highlights like "Le Risque".

However, I feel like this approach doesn't necessarily matter as much in practice as it does in concept, because having listened to and reviewed a lot of the band's output up until this point, for sure, I can tell when I'm not getting Stu McKenzie's trademark, a very gravely, droney growl. But the respective vocal styles of each band member, they don't vary all that widely. So there is a sameiness to the singing across the record.

However, this doesn't mean the record isn't without its selling points. There are quite a few good songs in this tracklist. There's a lot of attitude to the performances on this album as well. And I have to say, in comparison with a lot of the band's recent output, this is handily one of the most bright, joyous, and persistently feel good records King Gizzard has ever put out, as they're really letting loose on this LP in a way that is just pure fun.

Take, for example, the escapism of the track "Raw Feel", which is a cute rock anthem that's all about whatever it is that gives you that exciting little jolt in life, be it a song you're really passionate about or maybe even a pill.

If you need further proof that the band is in search of good vibes on this project, take the song "Sad Pilot", which is all about letting go of your problems. Maybe not sometimes in ways that are all that good or healthy for you, but still trying to leave them behind all the same.

There's also the hard, grooving "Field of Vision" which ends off in a very interesting way for any King Gizzard song. I mean, not only are the honking harmonicas and fuzzy buzzing guitar leads on the track great, but I love these group vocals that finish things off with, "I'm being silly, I'm being silly billy". And in my opinion, the zanier and more southern the instrumentation on this record sounds, the better.

Be that on "Hog Calling Contest", where you get more fiery guitar licks, literal pig calls, as well as just some intense band chemistry, or even the momentous closer "Daily Blues", which is a seven-minute monster in the tracklist that ties things together really well, not just musically, but conceptually as well. I mean, this may not be King Gizzard's most conceptual record yet, but there are a lot of nods to the various mentions across the record so far, to flying, letting go of hate, letting go of your problems.

Of course, there's a lot of symbolism throughout the record with the pigs and the rats, too. But yeah, as far as song structures and layering, this is easily the most epic track on the entire LP. And once again, the band is singing very much about letting go of hate, embracing love, even with those who you have hatred for.

Again, like I was saying earlier, there are some instrumental palettes and group vocal sections that, to my ears, feel very samey across the record, and I feel like whatever makes this album special tends to shrink or blur a little bit when the band dips a bit too far into making this sound like a psychedelic rock record as opposed to a rootsy rock record or a southern rock record or something that has some boogie to it.

For sure, sometimes the band's emulation of these styles doesn't really amount to much more than mere pastiche. But I still thought Flight B741 was a very solid record from King Giz, which is why I'm feeling a light to decent seven on it.

Anthony Fantano. King Gizzard. Forever.

The Needle Drop

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King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: Flight b741 [Album Review]

Simon Workman | August 10, 2024 August 9, 2024 | Headphone Approved Music , Reviews

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Flight b741 p(doom) Records [2024]

Album Overview: It only took them 26 tries, but King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard finally made an album that clearly follows in the footsteps of fellow Aussie rockers AC/DC. Well, not really—but Flight b741 is one of the band’s most straightforward rock records to date. It follows on the heels of last year’s stylistic detours, the thrash metal ecological concept album PetroDragonic Apocalypse ; and The Silver Cord , a guitar-less progressive electronic album released in two different versions (a standard edition and extended mix).

Musical Style: The album’s ten songs are steeped in the 70s bluesy hard rock tradition, but as usual the band throws in plenty of adventurous curveballs within that basic framework. There are, of course, lots of fuzzed-out guitars, manic drumming, and melodic bass playing, with touches of piano, organ, and harmonica. The production has a beefy, warm feel that gives the album a rootsy vibe, and there seem to be more than the usual number of shared vocals, something the album’s first single, “Le Risque,” demonstrates well.

Evolution of Sound: Anyone who has heard more than a couple of King Gizzard albums knows the band rarely repeat themselves. That said, there are some echoes of earlier projects in Flight b741 ’s musical DNA. The closest comparison is boogie stomp of 2019’s Fishing for Fishies , but there are also hints of the harmony-laden pop catchiness of Paper Mâché Dream Balloon and the layered songwriting of Changes too. The songs on Flight b741 should also lend themselves well to the jammier style the band has been pursuing in their live shows the last few years.

Artists with Similar Fire: If you like classic rock, this is the Gizz album for you. Led Zeppelin, the Stones, the Allman Brothers, T. Rex, ZZ Top, and yes, AC/DC, are just a few of the bands you could point to as possible influences on Flight b741 . King Gizzard’s approach does tend to be a bit more high-octane, though, infusing their rhythm section with punk-level energy.

Pivotal Tracks: “Mirage City” opens the album on an upbeat, twangy note before heading off in a looser, funkier direction on “Antarctica, which features some of the album’s best soloing, and the muscular guitar crunch of “Raw Feel.” “Le Risque” is another highlight, a chugging boogie that conjures the spirit of Marc Bolan while nodding to Billy Gibbons in equal measure. “Sad Pilot” is another blues-based rocker with molten guitar riffs supporting a surprisingly soulful set of vocal performances, while “Rats in the Sky” and “Daily Blues” send the album off with great full-band interplay.

Lyrical Strength: King Gizzard lyrics are always a bit inscrutable, but here the themes are a little more down to earth. There are also clear aviation motifs throughout, which go along with the claymation-style album cover (by frequent collaborator Jason Galea), the music video for “Le Risque,” and the album’s title.

KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD REVIEW HISTORY The Silver Chord (2023) / PetroDragonic Apocalypse (2023)  /  Changes (2022)  /  Laminated Denim (2022)  /  Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava (2022)  /  Omnium Gatherum (2022)  /  Butterfly 3000 (2021)  /  L.W. (2021)  /  K.G. (2020)  /  Chunky Shrapnel (2020)  /  Infest The Rats’ Nest (2019)  /  Fishing For Fishies (2019)  /  Gumboot Soup (2017)  /  Polygondwanaland (2017)  /  Sketches Of Brunswick East (2017)  /  Murder Of The Universe (2017)  /  Flying Microtonal Banana (2017)  /  Nonagon Infinity (2016)  /  Paper Mâché Dream Balloon (2015)  /  Quarters (2015)  /  I’m In Your Mind Fuzz (2014)

KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD LINKS Website  |  Facebook  |  Instagram  |  Twitter  |  Bandcamp  |  p(doom) Records

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The Silver Cord

November 8, 2023

In 2013, Giorgio Moroder sat down to give Daft Punk some advice. “Once you free your mind about a concept of harmony and of music being correct, you can do whatever you want,” he monologues on “ Giorgio by Moroder. ” Consider King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard enlightened: They’ve abided by that method for their entire career, yielding microtonal trilogies , thrash metal climate criticism , and occult-themed hip-hop . If you’ve ever wondered Have King Gizzard made a song like this? , chances are they have.

Inspired by Moroder’s free-spirited approach, the Australian sextet presents The Silver Cord, a synth-based improvisational odyssey that retells ancient mythologies. In an echo of the extended remixes Moroder created for stars like Donna Summer and Blondie , the album appears in two forms, one that runs about 30 minutes and the other stretched as thin as possible into 90 minutes. Skeptics might ask why; the band would probably answer, “Why not?” Even 25 albums in, it’s one of their wackiest and most uninhibited records to date.

The 30-minute mix is clearly the more approachable. Twinkling opener “Theia” might trick you into believing The Silver Cord resembles Butterfly 3000 , the mid-pandemic Gizz album that sought to escape into a world of lush synth loops. Closer inspection reveals the new album is more like an electrified sibling of Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava , whose mellow, free-flowing songs emerged from open-ended improvisational jam sessions. Though the band has traded guitars, drums, and bass for Rolands, Junos, and Moogs, you can hear familiar techniques, like Michael Cavanagh’s breakneck synth drum fills on “Chang’e” and Stu Mackenzie’s throaty growls on “Gilgamesh.”

The extended mix is where the band really runs wild, creating elaborate imaginings of mythological worlds. It feels most organic on the brighter tracks, like the chameleonic “Theia” (now pushed to 20 minutes), the head-bobbing “Set,” and the celestial “Chang’e.” Named for the Chinese deity who escaped to the moon, “Chang’e” is dreamy and invigorating, with synths that oscillate like waves. In the second half, the tempo rises and the synths pitch up, rocketing to the exosphere; then just when the song threatens to burst, it opens onto a new expanse, as if landing on the lunar surface. The brooding 11-minute version of “Gilgamesh,” on the other hand, drags on with little purpose except to challenge your attention span, and the chants of “Gila! Gila!” feel out of place amid the digital pulses.

The band takes another cue from Moroder with the metallic groove of “Set,” which picks up with a stuttering beat mimicking a turntable scrub. Rapping like a fourth Beastie Boy , Ambrose Kenny-Smith riffs on the Egyptian god of war and chaos with the psilocybin-infused lyricism Gizzard fans have come to expect: “Lucifer inverted/Slender usurper/Piece of work/Struggling stranglehold akin to poison and going for broke.” Certain King Gizzard albums would make welcome trip companions, while others you’d fervently hope to avoid . The Silver Cord lands right in the middle: The band’s retellings of these deities’ stories can be graceful (“Theia,” “Chang’e”) and other times so overwhelming they induce paranoia (“Swan Song,” “Extinction”).

The Silver Cord won’t convince every listener to join King Gizzard’s Phish -like fandom, but it stands out as one of their most playful records in recent years. And compared to some past gimmicks—like an album intended to be played ad infinitum —offering 30- and 90-minute options is practically fan service. Thirteen years into their career, and the band’s stamina is endless. They’ve traversed ancient Mesopotamia to outer space and it still feels like they’re searching for new terrain.

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The 10 best King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard songs... so far

From jazz to folk to thrash and beyond, frontman Stu Mackenzie recalls some of the band's standout guitar tracks

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are as prolific as they are diverse – in just over a decade, the Aussie rockers have managed to amass a comprehensive discography that runs the gamut of rock and pop.

As part of our comprehensive interview with leader Stu Mackenzie , we quizzed him on 10 of the band's best tracks so far. Here's what he had to say...

1. Head on/Pill

Album: Float Along - Fill Your Lungs (2013)

Though not the first of the band’s studio albums, Float Along - Fill Your Lungs was the release that helped cement The Gizz’ reputation in the UK as an exciting new force in the world of garage rock.

16-minute opener Head On/Pill finds the band effortlessly combining Indian-influenced '60s psychedelia with drone-y shoegaze and Oh Sees-style guitar freakouts over a repetitive, hypnotic beat.

“That was actually the first time we used two drum kits in a recording. Cav [Michael Cavanagh] has always drummed, but when Eric [Moore] joined Gizz, he was playing percussion and theremin and sh*t. We were always like, ‘We can’t have two drummers, that’s insane’, but eventually it was like, ‘F*ck it, we can have two drummers, who cares?’

"So Head On/Pill was the first song we recorded like that. It just came out of a lot of jams. I think that it will always be one of my favorite things that we’ve done. There was just a spark. 

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"I feel like songs are these little gift packages that just drop into your body and then exit and belong to the world. At that point in the band’s career, we’d been playing shows, but I feel like we’d just learnt to play together. We’re one piece now, and that was the moment we learnt to do that.”

2. Cellophane

Album: I’m In Your Mind Fuzz (2014)

The third part of a seamless four- song suite, this track from 2014’s swampy I’m In Your Mind Fuzz finds Stu frantically riffing on top of a propulsive, krautrock-inspired beat. From a guitarist’s perspective, Cellophane remains one of the most memorable songs in the band’s catalogue to date.

“Of the four tracks of that suite, this was the last one to come together. The I’m In Your Mind thing was first, and it did really feel like it needed to go to some other place. The song just needed to go somewhere else and then come back. 

"When we were piecing together that record, there was this one jam we recorded, and it had Cookie [Cook Craig, guitar] playing bass, and it was his riff. It was Cook, Cavs and myself, playing this loose guitar solo/riff thing. 

"I had recorded five or 10 minutes of it with one mic when we were rehearsing, and it happened to be in the same key as [the Mind Fuzz songs]. At the time, it was quite a lot slower, but I just used this jam as a launch point to write a song around it - and it was written really easily. 

"Cellophane is a segue - a section - and it’s awesome that people have latched onto it, because we didn’t really think of it as a song. It’s always surprising to us the things that people dig!”

3. The River

Album: Quarters (2015)

On their first of two releases in 2015, Quarters found the band dipping their collective toes into the realm of jazz-rock, with each of its four tracks clocking in at precisely 10 minutes and 10 seconds.

The most distinctive guitar work of the album comes from opener The River, with its slinky 5/4-time riffs dictating the ebb and flow of the track.

Sometimes things just fall into place, and that was one of those things

“We were just beginning to be open to changing our sound a little more, feeling more free to be quiet and lean less on yelling constantly. That song was written in the middle of summer, when we were renting a ski lodge in Hunter Mountain in upstate New York, where we recorded most of I’m In Your Mind Fuzz, but we wrote a handful of other songs there that ended up on different records, and this was one of them. 

"The earliest jams of The River were from there. It’s another one of my favorite songs that we’ve put together, because I think we were in a free headspace in that time, trying something that we hadn’t done before. We recorded that in Daptone Studios in Brooklyn, and it was pretty loose - we recorded the whole record in a day, save for a handful of overdubs, and it was pretty improv-y.

"Sometimes things just fall into place, and that was one of those things.”

4. Time=Fate

Album: Paper Mâché Dream Balloon (2015)

The Flute-heavy Paper Mâché Dream Balloon saw the band recording almost exclusively with acoustic instruments. Here, the guitarists offer up pastoral, mellow psychedelia, led by broken chords and folky fingerstyle picking.

Time=Fate’s counter-melodies keep the acoustic front and centre, perfectly demonstrating that the instrument’s use far exceeds simply playing a chord sequence.

“There’s a lot of flute on this album, and I was just learning to play at the time. It took a lot of takes just to get a very simple line. I really can’t play very well, but I can play well enough: ‘Roll tape, roll tape, roll tape, roll tape... Okay, got it’. 

"This song is a Cookie Craig-penned song. We recorded it out in the country in rural Victoria, where we converted a shipping container into a studio. I’m not sure if other people can hear it as a shipping container, but when I listen to that record, I just [hear] the specific reverberation in the room. 

"The main acoustic on this record is a nylon-stringed guitar that was one of my dad’s - it’s a left-handed guitar strung right-handed. I wanted it to be in our little shipping container studio for a couple of weeks and so that when anyone came over they could play it.”

5. Robot Stop

Album: Nonagon Infinity (2016)

For their eighth album, The Gizz pulled off an impressive feat - Nonagon Infinity can be played as one endless loop, finishing perfectly in time to where it starts, with no gaps between songs. 

This opening track combines classic Gizzard elements (harmonizing guitars, riffs doubling the vocal melody, Eastern scales) with a lengthy solo that employs a number of different guitar styles.

“I think we were ready to do another rock record - to get in there and make something loud and fast. I think we were listening to a lot of Krautrock. I know we were listening to Hawkwind a lot at the time.

"In our heads, this was our space rock album, but when you listen back to it that it maybe doesn’t sound like that. Robot Stop was maybe the fourth song that came together, and it felt like, ‘Oh, that’s the vibe of the album’. 

"We tried to record it as live as possible. For us at the time, it was a lot more high-tech than anything we’d ever done, and a lot more progressive. It was recorded in lots of chunks, but we had to know the sequence. We didn’t do a lot of tempo-matching; there was no click-track.

"We mostly worked it out in the rehearsal room, and it was quadruple the amount of practice we’d ever done for a record. It was so much harder than any record we’d ever made.”

• Stu Mackenzie: "King Gizzard was made to be loose... we didn't have a rehearsal for years!"

6. Rattlesnake

Album: Flying Microtonal Banana (2017)

Kicking off an ambitious five-albums-in-one-year run, 2017’s Flying Microtonal Banana found the group dabbling in microtonal tunings thanks to Stu’s custom-built ‘Flying Banana’ guitar, with additional frets added across the neck to allow for clear notes to be played between semitones.

“I had been to Turkey, and I brought home a bağlama, which is a Turkish stringed instrument. I wrote a handful of songs on it and I really thought we were gonna make this bağlama record, but it just didn’t work. 

Flying Microtonal Banana felt low-stakes because we were doing something weird on purpose

"The logical conclusion was to work out how to tune an electric guitar like that. It was a coincidence that this guy Zac Eccles approached me about making a guitar, and I said, ‘Lets add some crazy frets to it’. 

"We wrote all new songs, which was cool, because the guitar was so inspiring and it had this sound all of its own. I thought we’d write a song but we wrote a whole record. 

"Flying Microtonal Banana felt low-stakes because we were doing something weird on purpose. I like quarter-tone music because it’s the exact middle of the 12-tone. It feels like the exact furthest away you can get from the notes that you’re familiar with. It’s dissonant in this beautiful way.”

7. Crumbling Castle

Album: Polygondwanaland (2017)

This monster of a track from the otherwise synth-heavy (yet folky) Polygondwanaland showcases a number of melodic King Crimson-style riffs, played with absolute dexterity, before finally sinking into a sludgy doom metal outro. 

Despite clocking in at nearly 11 minutes, the boys’ guitar work never takes an unnecessary detour, playing only to propel the song itself forward.

“This was the hardest song that we’d ever made. It came about when we were making Murder Of The Universe [2017], and it started off as this more metal-ish, heavy track, but it just felt like it had this rhythmic depth to it. 

"We were doing this polyrhythm thing where the bass and drums are in one groove and the guitars and vocals are sitting in another pocket, and it just kept pulling away from that record and saying ‘I don’t belong here, I’ve got this other vibe going on’. 

"So that song was left off that record, and it kept developing, morphing. I think we recorded four or five different versions of it before it felt done. It was a super challenging song, and we were still learning how to mess around with these types of music. 

"It was really scary [laughs]. I wish I could remember what we were trying to do with the ending!”

8. The Great Chain of Being

Album: Gumboot Soup (2017)

To some, the band’s fifth album of 2017 plays more like a b-sides collection for what has come before it, but a closer listen reveals some of the band’s most memorable guitar work to date. 

Freed from any concept album continuity, the band range from Sleep-esque stoner metal (The Great Chain of Being) to the group’s funkiest riffs yet (Down The Sink).

“That type of music [stoner rock] is something we listen to a lot on tour, especially whilst driving. It definitely started to seep into our subconsciousness.

"[The Great Chain Of Being] is like a road song to me. We were trying to finish the five albums in a year, trying to make things varied and trying to experiment with recording as well. I think the recording is slowed down on the tape machine. 

"We were messing around a lot at this point, and it was the fifth record of the five. We thought, ‘Let’s just try everything’. I think it allowed us to be super free and be open. In a lot of ways, each song just felt lower-stakes, therefore you can take more risks - which was the point of the five records, just to see how many risks we could take.

"Obviously not everything is going to pay off, but some of my favorite songs I’ve ever written came out of that year.”

9. Boogieman Sam

Album: Fishing For Fishies (2019)

After going an entire year without releasing a new album, King Gizz delivered two in 2019, starting with the boogie woogie-influenced Fishing For Fishies. 

The album’s perky, upbeat style is none more apparent than on Boogieman Sam, which showcases a staccato fingerstyle riff at the heart of the song and a fingerpicked solo to boot.

“We wanted to do a whole record that had a swing feel, and I think that’s where the boogie thing came from. They’re kind of the same but they are different, and it went into this blues realm. It’s in drop D which is pretty rare for us, though it’s not in [the key of] D. 

"The tuning just allows us to do that riff. Maybe if you had really long fingers you could do it [in E standard], but I need to be in drop D to play that one. It was one of the middle songs to come together for that record, and it’s just a really fun jam and a fun live song that gets a bit loose and stands out a bit. I’m not a fingerpicker, it’s not the way I learnt to play. 

"I just use clawhammer - my thumb and my first finger - and I think it’s just because I’m bad at it [laughs]. That solo is just played on a single string. I don’t even know how it came together, it was just like, ‘This sounds funny, let’s do this!’”

10. Planet B

Album: Infest The Rats Nest (2019)

On Infest The Rats Nest, the boys dive headfirst into thrash metal, complete with tapping solos, double-bass drum patterns and palm-muted chugging riffs. Mackenzie uses every trick in the book to create as thrilling a metal album as you’ll hear.

“This is my bread and butter - what I grew up with but never felt like I was gonna play. When I was learning guitar, I’d bring Master Of Puppets or Reign In Blood to a lesson, and the teacher would be like, ‘You can’t play that, you’re just learning. Here’s some Jack Johnson.’ 

"Cavs and Joe and I grew up on a fair amount of heavy metal, and so the three of us just started jamming this heavy stuff which just turned into the record. It was very natural. People come into it like, ‘Oh, they made a thrash metal record’, but that record feels more ‘us’ than a lot of records that we’ve made. 

"I got the Gibson Explorer around the same time, and during a jam it was like, ‘I think we should make the heaviest record we’ve ever made.’ That guitar came up at the right time, where I was open to playing an Explorer [laughs]. 

"Every single guitar track on that record is the Explorer - Joe and I did all the overdubs with that guitar. We’d never done that before, where one guitar plays all guitars!”

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Stan is a Production Editor and writer for Total Guitar, a publication that he has been reading since the age of 10, which is partly responsible for his enduring love of the instrument. He also works for Computer Music and Future Music magazines, and has written for a number of Bristol-based blogs and zines since graduating from the University of South Wales in 2015. Stan is an alternative music enthusiast and has played in a number of indie bands, though he dreams of one day having a picking hand fast enough to form a death metal group. Wish him luck.

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