King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s sense of unfettered sonic exploration makes it easy to mistake them for a long-forgotten relic of the psych explosion of the 1960s. With a far-out sound that, at times, feels barely held together, the band evoke the eclectic rock experimentation of Frank Zappa’s early work with the Mothers of Invention, the anything-goes feeling of the Flaming Lips, and the demented glee of a random, obscure ’60s group plucked from a Pebbles compilation as they follow their musical flights of fancy wherever they might lead. King Gizzard’s prolific nature has led them to release albums at a frenetic pace, and their intense desire to seek out new sounds and follow new paths — from expansive jazz-rock (2015′s Quarters) to semi-acoustic ballads (the same year’s Paper Mâché Dream Balloon), and from sci-fi prog (2017′s Murder of the Universe) to trippy garage rock (2014′s I'm in Your Mind Fuzz), explorations of microtonal tunings (2017′s Flying Microtonal Banana) or straight-ahead classic rock (2024′s Flight b741) — means that every one of their multitude of releases sounds different from the last. Some of their albums, especially Nonagon Infinity from 2016, stand shoulder to shoulder with the best psychedelic rock ever made, and even their most daring moves — like releasing a death metal song cycle (2019′s Infest the Rats Nest), an album that revolves around a single chord change (2022′s Changes), or one built around bubbling analog synth loops (2021′s Butterfly 3000) — land like a knockout punch. Their energetic stage shows and the puzzle-like intricacies of their records attracted a sizable following, and by the time of 2023′s all-synthesizer concept album The Silver Cord, the group were festival headliners capable of selling out multiple nights in a given city and filling the Hollywood Bowl. Formed in 2011 in Melbourne, Australia, by a group of friends who jammed frequently, then decided on a whim to play a show, the lineup consisted of vocalist/guitarist Stu Mackenzie, harmonica player/singer Ambrose Kenny-Smith, guitarists Cook Craig and Joey Walker, bassist Lucas Skinner, and dual drummers Michael Cavanagh and Eric Moore. They released two garage rock-inspired EPs in 2011, Anglesea and Willoughby's Beach, then in 2012 released their debut album, 12 Bar Bruise. Working at the kind of feverish pace that became their standard, King Gizzard followed up just five months later with 2013′s Eyes Like the Sky, which the band described as a “spaghetti Western audio book” complete with narration by Ambrose Kenny-Smith’s father, the noted Australian musician Broderick Smith. A third full-length, Float Along, Fill Your Lungs, was released in 2013 and was quickly followed by 2014′s Oddments and I'm in Your Mind Fuzz. Still working quickly, in early 2015 they released the Quarters EP, which featured four trippy, free jazz-inspired jams that each timed out exactly at 10:10. After signing to ATO Records, King Gizzard’s sound took a detour from expanded jams and fuzzy freak-outs to tightly constructed, but still weird, laid-back pop songs played exclusively on acoustic instruments on the 2015 album Paper Mâché Dream Balloon. The follow-up, 2016′s Nonagon Infinity, was recorded at Daptone Studios and featured some of the band’s heaviest, most forceful psych-rock to date. It was recorded so that one track bleeds into the next, then jumps back to the beginning after the last song. They tout it as the “world’s first infinitely looping album.” The band spent time touring and getting five albums ready for release in 2017. On the first of them, Flying Microtonal Banana, King Gizzard decided to investigate microtonal tuning, a non-Western way of tuning that involves intervals smaller than a semitone. They had a custom-made guitar gifted to them, and the band members bought new gear and altered the instruments so they could be microtuned in a way that made them compatible. The group’s second album of 2017, Murder of the Universe, arrived two months later in March. It was broken into three long sections, each one telling a different apocalyptic tale of the human race being taken over by cyborgs and AI while featuring heavy use of synths and spoken word narration. Just before that album’s release, the band finished a collaboration with Mild High Club’s Alex Brettin, who traveled from L.A. to King Gizzard’s Flightless HQ studios in East Brunswick, Melbourne, where he and Stu Mackenzie put together some rough ideas. The duo was then joined by the rest of the band to fill those ideas in. Titled Sketches of Brunswick East, the album was a heady mix of soft rock, psych-pop, and cosmic jazz. It was released by ATO in August 2017, mere months before their next record arrived. The relatively straightforward (for King Gizzard) psychedelic opus Polygondwanaland was given away for free and the master tapes were offered to anyone who wanted to press the album up and sell it. ATO was one of the first to take advantage of this, and several other labels followed suit. Fulfilling the group’s pledge to put out five albums in 2017, they snuck in Gumboot Soup just under the deadline. The collection of thematically and sonically unconnected songs, a rarity for the group, was issued digitally on December 31, then given a physical release in April 2018. King Gizzard took the rest of 2018 relatively easy, playing occasional shows and not releasing any albums until November, when ATO reissued their first five records on the same day. The group took a relatively relaxed approach to releasing new music in the first half of 2019, too, issuing a single in February, “Cyboogie,” that hinted at a new blues-based approach, then another in early April, “Planet B,” that swerved into thrash metal territory. When their first album of the year, Fishing for Fishies, was released in late April, the sound was more like the former single, with the band digging deep into boogie rock, biker jams, and blues-rock, all fed through their unique musical and lyrical filter. They followed in the direction of the “Plan B” single later that year on Infest the Rats Nest, a blistering metal album that revolved thematically around the death of Earth and the population of nearby planets. It was recorded by a stripped-down version of the band, often just a trio, and released in August. Around that time, King Gizzard launched a worldwide tour; recordings made at various stops were compiled on the 2020 live album Chunky Shrapnel. A like-named feature film documenting the tour was also made and released alongside the record in late April. Never one to let something, even a global pandemic, slow down their frantic recording pace, the band started working on an album while holed up in their respective homes in Melbourne. Taking up the custom-made instruments featured on Flying Microtonal Banana, the group ended up making something of a sequel to that album while also adding some acid disco to the mix on the track “Intrasport.” K.G. was issued in November 2020, the same day a double-live album titled Live in San Francisco '16 hit the shelves. The former was their first record without drummer Eric Moore, who left in August to devote more time to his record label, Flightless. K.G. was only half of the results of King Gizzard’s socially distanced sessions; the remaining songs were released in early 2021 as L.W. The band weren’t content to stay in one lane, as usual, and their second album of the year was one of their most audacious to date. Constructed from loops made on vintage modular synths, Butterfly 3000 is all major-key melodies, warm-as-the-sun arrangements, and positive vibes. It was released by the band’s own KGLW label in June, just before the group played their first post-lockdown show in Norway. King Gizzard were scheduled to go out on the road following the album’s release, but rescheduled the dates for 2022. Fans had to be satisfied by the steady release of archived live shows, and the release in early 2022 of Butterfly 3001, a remix album that featured a number of artists reworking songs from Butterfly 3000. Some, like Héctor Oaks and Fred P, guided the songs to the dancefloor, while others, like Flaming Lips and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, took a headier approach. The band weren’t idle during this time off the road, gathering in the studio as soon as they could to begin work on 2022′s album Omnium Gatherum. Touching on styles as diverse as lite-jazz, thrash metal, hip-hop, and funk, the record was their first in a long time to not have a central sonic direction or over-arching theme, and was instead intended as a random collection of songs. The group headed out soon after its release in April 2022 on an exhaustive slate of live shows. The band resumed their release schedule in late 2022 with Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava, an album built around free-form studio jams that were edited into songs by MacKenzie, then filled with overdubs provided by the rest of the group. The result was a typically sprawling affair, full of guitar freak-outs, apocalyptic lyrics, and joyous energy. In the weeks that followed, they played delayed concerts at Red Rocks, released Laminated Denim, which was made up of two 15-minute songs that served as the intermission music at the shows, and finally issued an album they had been working on off-and-on since 2017. Using variations on a single chord change and touching on jazz, hip-hop, laid-back funk, and late-night soul, Changes delved into the softer side of King Gizzard’s approach without sacrificing any of their usual giddily experimental nature. The band continued to tour heavily during the first half of 2023, playing festivals, caverns, four-night residencies, and the Hollywood Bowl. Just before their June date at the latter, the group released their second straight-ahead metal album, PetroDragonic Apocalypse; Or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation. As with Infest the Rats Nest, it was mainly recorded by the core of MacKenzie, guitarist Joey Walker, and drummer Michael Cavanagh and the songs were based on a similar concept of death and destruction on a planetary scale. That album was followed by the usual unpredictable artist left turn. Inspired by the purchase of a Simmons drum kit, the group decided to make an all-electronic album and utilized every synthesizer and keyboard they owned. Influences on The Silver Cord ranged from the throbbing disco of early Donna Summer to the banging jams of Technotronic, with added rapping and absolutely no guitars. It was released in an edited version that ran 30 minutes or an expanded version where each song was allowed over ten minutes to fully unspool. The band continued to tour incessantly, dashing thorugh Europe and the U.K. in the first half of 2024. During that time they formed a new label, p(doom), and set about recording their most surprising album to date. Based around no concept other than having fun and rocking out, the sessions featured the band playing crummy amps cranked to 11, adding pedal steel guitar, laying down loose, Stones-y riffs, sharing lead and background vocals, and delving into their shared love of good time classic rock from the ’70s. Flight b741 was released in August of 2024, afterwhich the band headed out on a long tour of North America. ~ Gregory Heaney & Tim Sendra