“I'D NEVER HEARD ANYONE DO THIS BEFORE"

Inside the strange world of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, the most eclectic and prolific rock band on Earth...

- Grant Moon

They'd made 20 albums in 10 years. Then they released three new albums - yes, three - in the last month. But there is method in this madness, as King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard's affable vocalist, co-guitarist and head honcho Stu Mackenzie explains. "There's always a plan when we make an album," he says. "Sometimes it's still being formulated throughout the process, and sometimes it's more of a mission statement, a manifesto. Usually we'll have a couple of songs that have one vibe and some that have another, so we join the ones that have similar themes then write more songs like that. It's like we're creating brothers and sisters for them."

Since their 2012 debut 12 Bar Bruise, this Melbourne-based collective have populated their 'Gizzverse' with their own trippy cocktail of garage-psych rock, proggy jams, thrash metal and world music. From the thrilling experiments of 2017's Flying Microtonal Banana to the balls-out metal of 2019's Infest The Rats' Nest, their catalogue shows how compelling and eclectic they are. And in 2022, they've been more prolific than ever before.

April saw release of their 20th LP, Omnium Gatherum - their first double album - which embraced alt-rock, hip-hop, space rock, metal, jazz, soul and more. And in October came three albums in quick succession: first, Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava, then Laminated Denim, and finally Changes. This vast array of brand new material shows the serious musicality beneath their veneer of hip quirk; the band embracing modal jams, polyrhythmic intermission music and some woozy exercises in rapid key modulation. It's unbelievable when listening to it, but Omnium Gatherum seems to have been the most straightforward affair.