In recent years, King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard, a wild bunch of 6 Australians have attracted a lot of attention, with performances all around the world at festivals and indoor tours. My apologies to those who already knew for over a decade how great this band is, I only stumbled upon them a few years ago and fell in love with them straight away. Instead of reviewing their latest records, I’ll briefly write a few things about the stuff I have lying around here. Next to that, I’ll just describe them in a few paragraphs with some pictures. As with all of my music related blog posts, I’d suggest you just to go and check out their music for yourself. This one is hard do describe in words. It’s a 6-headed Octopus (yeah, I know, scientifically this doesn’t make any sense, but we’re talking art here!)
What does WikiPedia have to say?
Often a good starting point for exploring something new is to see what Wikipedia has to say about it. As for most other topics, it kind of summarizes things concisely, but I’d say there’s much more to say about these folks! Definitely go and check out over there, as there’s a lot of details about their history and their prolific discography!
These guys could indeed be marked as a rock band, but they cover so many different styles and genres, it’s actually really hard to put any specific labels onto them. According to Wikipedia we’re looking at Psychedelic Rock, Garage Rock, Psychedelic Pop, Progressive Rock, Heavy Metal, Neo-psychedelia.
Last night, at Forest National in Brussels, just after walking in I felt like I was in a record store. One could say unfortunately the offer was kind of one-sided, as they just had stuff from King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. I didn’t count all of them, but I do remember one of them was number 27 on their list. Despite having started in 2010, these guys have since released 25 studio albums, and over 15 live records. Luckily I managed to contain myself and not spend too much money there. At some point in future I’ll be able to say I’ve got all of their albums, but not any time soon. Photo credits to my cute undisclosed assistant photographer, as I forgot to take one of the merchandise booth myself 🙂
Their last album The Silver Cord is what one could categorize as an electronic album, of course mixed with all the typical excursions the guys like to make during a jam. According to the band, this one would be very different from, but at the same time very compatible to their previous release just half a year before. A few more notes on that one follow next.
If there’s one thing a band like King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard are not scared by, it’s long titles. Somehow there might be a clue for that in the band name already, but hey, who am I to judge? The metal album that was released just about a year ago has such a long title that I’ll need a pause to take a breath somewhere one third in. Here we go, it is: “Petrodragonic Apocalypse; Or, Dawn Of Eternal Night: An Annihilation Of Planet Earth And The Beginning Of Merciless Damnation”. It’s only 18 words!
As you can imagine, I’ve got quite a few more record of these guys in my collection, such as these 5 I bought within half an hour of hearing the band for the first time when my brother suggested me to check them out. I won’t go into the details of all of these, but each are a bit of a different style, as King Gizzard like to do. From top left from bottom right these are: K.G. (Explorations Into Microtonal Tuning Volume 2), Flying Microtonal Banana (Explorations Into Microtonal Tuning Volume 1), Nonagon Infinity, Polygondwanaland and I’m In Your Mind Fuzz.
As one image says more than a thousand words, I’ve just added a few pictures I took last night in Brussels. You can imagine this is eclectic, this is grabbing you by the throat, pulling you in, making you feel very welcome, making you feel really alive. Welcome to the universe of King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard! It’s loud, it’s melodic, it’s fast, yet slow, it’s stoner, it’s psychedelic, it’s metal, it’s electronic, it’s a true Kingdom, all hail King Gizzard!
The setlist in Brussels consisted of 12 songs, or jams, or, well, pieces of the Gizzverze! Quite sure they jammed together another 3 records in between!
- Am I In Heaven ((teases of “Flamethrower”, “Cut Throat Boogie”, “Witchcraft”, and “Iron Lung”)
- Flamethrower
- Witchcraft
- Supercell
- Crumbling Castle
- The Fourth Colour
- This Thing
- Iron Lung
- Hypertension
- Work This Time
- Magma
- Float Along – Fill Your Lungs
The observant readers among you probably already realized that King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard are really a band that kind of really introduced me to a whole new spectrum of musical adventures. Last summer I also got to enjoy them working in the Front Stage at the Pukkelpop Festival. That show for me was one of the best in more than 20 editions of Pukkelpop over the past few decades. So next time they’re around, you better join me for this one!
