If they’re not on the road, King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard are likely to be found in the studio, writing songs for multiple albums simultaneously. There’s little downtime in the Australian psych-wizards’ camp, and to date, they’ve shared a monumental 26 albums since their formation in 2010.
The band's leader, and self-proclaimed “mad professor”, Stu Mackenzie humorously describes his need to create as a way of “emptying the trash” from his mind. Part of this “purge” includes the band's continuous need to experiment. Whether it’s recording a set of songs timed exactly at the same length (Quarters), inventing new instruments (Flying Microtonal Banana), dropping albums that pinball erratically between genres (Omnium Gatherum), or recording an album as one long infinite loop (Nonagon Infinity), King Gizzard are consistently crossing new boundaries, making unexpected moves, and redefining the art of music-making.
But with such a gargantuan output, for new listeners, it’s difficult to know where to start. Therefore we’ve cherrypicked their five best albums as an easy gateway into their weird and wonderful world.
So sit back, strap in, and if they happen to release a new album by the time you’ve finished reading this, we’ll be sure to recalculate.
Nonagon Infinity (2016)
In 2016, King Gizzard broke through to the Australian albums chart for the first time with Nonagon Infinity, a nine-song record designed to be played as one infinite loop. As though powered by some kind of spluttering, rusty motor, opener Robot Stop sets the rapid pace, its introduction also doubling as the crescendo of closer Road Train.
Meanwhile, each song rolls seamlessly into the next for a continuous singular ride, as Mackenzie whizzes through inter-dimensional tales of robots and monsters, casting listeners into an inescapable “warped science-fiction dark fantasy world”. Fortunately, it’s a world with fun bursting through its stratosphere, stand-out tracks including the rootin'-tootin' cowboy hat-flinging Gamma Knife, as well as Evil Death Roll, which seems to soundtrack a cosmic surf through treacherous waters, where extraterrestrial reptiles await to “sever limbs”. Crikey!
Flying Microtonal Banana (2017)
An album which spotlights King Gizzard’s gift for experimentation, 2017’s Flying Microtonal Banana - the first of five LPs they released that year - was christened after the invention of their very own instrument, a guitar modelled from the Middle Eastern bağlama. The band’s guitars, harmonicas and keyboards were all given the microtonal treatment, which provided them with a broader span of notes and tunings not familiar in Western music, and their tinkering gave way to one of their most peculiar and innovative albums to date.
Topped by fan-favourite Rattlesnake, which reintroduces more of Nonagon Infinity’s krautrock briskness, the album quickly redirects onto a more laid-back and unfamiliar road, its discordant melodies working to mystify, rather than boldly surprise.
Lyrically inspired by environmental anxieties, the album's bohemian zurna-honking psychedelia makes for the perfect playground for exploring the uncertainty of the Earth's future without being too heavy-handed. On Melting, Mackenzie’s vocals eerily slither through the hypnotic microtones, where as on Open Water, panic bubbles just beneath the surface. Mesmerising, incredibly strange and quintessentially King Gizz.
Infest The Rats Nest (2019)
For 2019’s Infest the Rats Nest, the Aussie experimentalists took yet another surprising turn, relinquishing their psychedelic sensibilities for an album far heavier than anything they’d released up until that point.
Turning to the music that inspired them growing up, King Gizzard is a thrashing, apocalyptic protest against the Billionaire space race - ‘Mars for the privileged, Earth for the poor’ - tackling themes of climate change and ecological disaster within a sci-fi-inspired storyline about a group of humans who try to escape Earth by colonising Venus, though they eventually end up in hell.
For this record, the seven-strong King Gizzard power through as a rare trio, formed of Mackenzie, co-guitarist Joey Walker and drummer Michael Cavanagh. Despite this slimmed-down line-up, the racket made by the trio is anything but pared back ; there's nods to Metallica with their thrashy, old school helpings on Planet B, Motorhead on the Overkill-adjacent Venusian 2, and Black Sabbath on the head-tipping, doom metal cracker Superbug, all menacingly voiced by Mackenzie, who channels the low and gruff rasp of some kind of hellish imp.
Omnium Gatherum (2022)
Possibly the best entry point for any newcomer, their 20th studio album Omnium Gatherum covers just about every genre within the Gizzverse. From the stoner-y thrash of Gaia and Predator X - complete with Danny Carey-style drumming and abrasive prog metal riffing - the bouncing hip-hop of Sadie Sorceress and The Grip Reaper, the lax afro-funk of Presumptuous to the glittering psychedelic pop on The Garden Goblin, this record lays testament to the Aussie’s meritorious songwriting abilities and seamless knack for genre-hopping.
Omnium Gatherum is the group's first double album set, and it kicks off with the 18 minute album highlight The Dripping Tap, a wild psychedelic freakout with blinding guitar-neck-strangling solos and a bizarre ear-invading vocal line: 'drip, drip from the tap don't slip on the drip'.
PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation (2023)
In 2023, King Gizzard set out to release a pair of sister-albums following a "yin and yang" design. Though related, the two projects would be drastically different, resulting in the disco and Kraftwerk-inspired The Silver Cord and its darker predecessor, the bowel-draining thrash epic PetroDragonic Apocalypse (its full mouthful of a title listed above). Having noted how much fun metal is to perform, Mackenzie returned to the same three-person set up as 2019's Infest The Rats Nest, whirling the noise-meter to its uppermost limits with earsplitting, jammering riffs and percussion so explosive it could uproot the Earth.
In the studio, PetroDragonic Apocalypse was created "backwards", firstly jammed out to match Mackenzie's stories about "humankind, Planet Earth" and also "witches, dragons and shit". It's a distinctly nerdy, D&D-flavoured record with Pagan-undertones, churning up images of planet-devastating storms, cauldron-stirring sorcerers, druids, dragon fire and witch-killing monsters. The music video for the exultant Gila Monster was even directed to come across as a fourth The Lord Of The Rings film. Highlights include the transcendental Tool-inspired stretches of Motor Spirit, the fantastical dark poetry of Witchcraft and the blustering pant-blackening thrash of Flamethrower. An absorbing, mind-altering adventure, and certainly one of King Gizzard's finest ever releases.
