When you tell someone your favorite band is a psychedelic rock/synth/metal band called “King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard,” you often get quite the raised eyebrow. Such a chaotic spilling of super-niche gibberish, they’ll say. The eyebrow raises even higher when I say “But, no, they really do have something for everyone!” But it’s true; any artist that’s been as prolific and wide-ranging in genre as King Gizzard has (26 albums at last count, soon to be 27 later today, August 9) can appeal to many a listener otherwise happy with their niche of audio genre. Allow me to take a break from my usual sci-fi musings and let me introduce you to just a smidgen of their discography, and see for yourself why King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard can be for everyone, even when it seems it’s all just custom-made for me. I’ll be rating them on my personal taste, their approachability by new listeners, and their overall “Gizzard”-ness (measured in lizards per wizard).
Personal Rating: 5/10
Approachability: 7/10
Gizzardness: 1 Lizard / 5 Wizards
Best Song: “Elbow”
The only way to begin is at the beginning: the first album of KGLW is a good garage rock debut! It’s got everything a band that would feel at home on the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World soundtrack would have: plenty of “heys!” and “yeahs!” (74 heys in the first song alone!) and heavy distorted, lo-fi guitars on short, spirited tracks. There’s an energetic and indie drive to the songs, as the members of King Gizzard start on their stereophonic journey.
But, it’s not very Gizzard-y! At least, not yet. They were still finding their sound this early on, and hadn’t opened up to their creative side yet. This is just a bunch of young Aussies jamming out and having fun. The one track that begins to veer into their wackier inclinations is “Sam Cherry’s Last Shot,” which, standing apart from the rest of the punky rock, is a spoken word Western short story read by frontman Stu’s father, with backing tracks that remind me of Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia.” This track would go on to inspire their next album, “Eyes Like the Sky,” which is chock full of the same style.
The most similar album to this one is “Float Along – Fill Your Lungs,” their third album. Still got a lot of the same garage aesthetic, but a little more on the psychedelic side.
Personal Rating: 9/10
Approachability: 7/10
Gizzardness: 5 Lizards / 5 Wizards
Best Track: “Gamma Knife”*
This album was my, and most of the world’s, introduction to King Gizzard. Debuting in the Top 20 of Australian charts, and Top 100 on the American side, “Nonagon Infinity” explodes into sound from the very beginning of its infinitely looping, nine-track runtime. Each song melds seamlessly into the next, with a driving, incessant tempo and an ecstatic energy that is so, so easy to get swept up in. The music ebbs and flows between more relaxed, psychedelic motifs and the fast paced, over-the-top noisy licks, while peppering in leitmotifs from one to the other, as well as sonic Easter eggs harkening back to previous (or hinting at future) releases. Just as the album feels like it’s coming to a crashing end at “Road Train,” the familiar beats of “Robot Stop” begin again, and the sonic journey continues never-ending.
King Gizzard’s fascination with microtonal guitars begins to appear here. Microtonal notes, tones between the notes in the traditional Western A-G scale, lend themselves to the psychedelic theme, incorporating Near-East and South-Asian motifs that we’ve come to associate with hippy, trippy music, thanks to the introduction of non-standard tunings by musicians like George Harrison of the Beatles in the heyday of psychedelic rock and pop.
Most everyone loves their introductory album, and I’m no exception. This album is still in my usual rotation nearly a decade after I first heard it, and its album art graces the one bit of King Gizzard merch I’ve let myself buy. It’s a fantastic pump-up album, great to get myself going for the day or to keep energy up while road tripping. If you’re going to get into KGLW, this is a great place to start.
The most similar album to this one is the immediately following “Flying Microtonal Banana,” which leans even more into the microtonal jams (if that wasn’t incredibly obvious from the title).
*The whole album is one long track, so “Gamma Knife,” technically, is my favorite section. But that’s being pedantic.
Personal Rating: 10/10
Approachability: 5/10
Gizzardness: 4 Lizards / 5 Wizards
Best Song: “Mars for the Rich”
Well, I couldn’t keep sci-fi out of my blog posts, now could I? Pivoting again into a new genre, “Infest the Rats’ Nest” is a heavier-than-heavy thrash metal sci-fi concept album that makes the energy levels of “Nonagon” sound like elevator music. Hard hitting both musically and lyrically, this album drives home from the very beginning King Gizzard’s main allegorical theme: environmentalism.
“There is No Planet B” is a stark statement of environmental verdict, pointing a condemning finger at those who would burn and pollute the world, with no regard to the fact that this is the only planet we’ve got. “Mars for the Rich” turns that vitriol on those who would rather leave the masses behind for a heady daydream stay on the Red Planet (A City on Mars, anyone?). The next several tracks attack anti-environmental ideas in a similar vein, from factory farms to antibiotic resistant diseases, all with an aggressive, infectious (pardon the pun), thrashing melody and drive pushing it on. The back half of the album, though, morphs into a space opera sci-fi concept album, keeping that same heavy metal motif, but painting the imagery of people, who are not allowed to go to Mars to escape the dying Earth, trying desperately to find a life on Venus (spoiler alert: it does not go well).
This album is basically my Kryptonite: the perfect mix of over-the-top metal mentality with a pertinent and pervasive message that is easy to get mad as all get-out about, all with a dash of spacey science fiction. Their musings and ideals about environmentalism hits a high-water mark in this album, without the musicality of the tracks suffering for the message.
The most similar album is the incredibly long-winded “PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation.” How’s that for a word-count padding?! More metal, more message, more everything.
Personal Rating: 5/10
Approachability: 9/10
Gizzardness: 2 Lizards / Wizards
Best Song: “Sense”
On the absolute other end of the spectrum we have “Paper Mâché Dream Balloon.” Folk rock, replete with jazzy clarinet and flute backed by acoustic guitar and soft vocals, oozes from the speaker with languidity and chill vibes. Feeling somewhere between the Grateful Dead and the Beatles at their most psychedelic, this album is an acoustic whiplash from everything I’ve described so far.
But it wouldn’t be a King Gizzard album unless there was some twist to make it their own. While the somewhat twee music lilts and soothes, the lyrics tread some incredibly dark ground. As the flute trills up, the frontman drives it back down with “I can’t help but be sad sometimes” and “when I’m gone/ and I’m dead/ What will be inside my head?” A shocking discordant schism between tone and theme; what could be more King Gizzard?
As long as you’re not focusing on the lyrics too hard, this album is a great easy listening, and may be the most approachable acoustically. But it’s not quite what I come to King Gizzard to find, in my personal experience, but it has grown on me over the years!
The most similar album is…
Personal Rating: 9/10
Approachability: 8/10
Gizzardness: 3 Lizards/ 5 Wizards
Best Song: “Interior People”
This one! “Butterfly 3000” is a synth-pop turn on the easier listening side of King Gizzard. Bubbly, bouncy synthesizers and high, clear vocals made this my number one beach listen, which is probably helped by it coming out right when I was traveling beachside. This album doesn’t shy away from the issues the musicians hold dear, either; take a part mental health journey, part post-COVID recuperation, and part ever-present environmental worry, let it chrysalis, and out pops “Butterfly 3000.”
While I said that “Paper Mâché” isn’t what I listen to King Gizzard for, this one still is near the top of my favorite albums. Much like them, I don’t let myself get put into a box! Perhaps it was the timing, as I said above, or that the lyrics’ mental health message were in sync with my own journey, or just my upbringing listening to my dad’s old electronica albums, something made this album resonate incredibly deeply with me. As such, this album worms its way into my head anytime I’m out for a walk in the summer, or dipping my toes in the pool.
While this review blog has gone on quite long, I’ve only covered about a fifth of their albums. Take these recommendations as a leaping off point, and find a place in King Gizzard’s drastically prolific universe for yourself in the library’s offerings, or through hoopla. Or, better yet, start in with their most recent album, which comes out today!
