King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard

King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard is one of the most prolific and prolific acts in modern rock history. These Australian natives draw upon an eclectic variety of musical influences for their music ranging from their signature neo-psych sound, surf music, thrash metal and more – sometimes all within one song!

Melbourne-based band Lark are musical chameleons who effortlessly switch genres and styles within each song they perform.

Psychedelic Rock

Psychedelic rock music takes inspiration from hallucinogens like marijuana and LSD, first popularised during the late 1960s youth counterculture movement known as the Summer of Love of 1967. Additionally, this period saw experimentation with new recording techniques, effects, and musical genres being pioneered during that period.

King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard embody the spirit of psychedelic rock with their tireless hard work ethic and expansive musical interests, which range from synth prog to folk rock. Constantly pushing themselves to explore new sounds and themes that connect stories on their albums.

King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard’s 2019 release Infest the Rats’ Nest offered an eclectic psychedelic garage rock sound incorporating heavy metal influences. This album featured early King Gizzard classics like “Robot Stop”, “People Vultures”, and “Gamma Knife”, along with their post-apocalyptic chapter titles The Tale of Altered Beast” and “The Lord of Lightning vs Balrog.”

Microtonal-Folk

With its signature Tinariwen guitar lines and the added agitated sounds of the zurna (Central Eurasian wind instrument), this song demonstrates microtonal folk. King Gizzard’s unconventional aesthetic fits seamlessly with these quirky microtones.

Flying Microtonal Banana was their inaugural album exploring microtonal tuning. All tracks featured the ‘Huseyni’ scale commonly found in Turkish folk music.

Though many of their albums don’t strictly adhere to microtonality, they certainly experiment with it. On Consider the Source, Marin plays fretless guitar notes that don’t fall within Western scales and give off a Middle Eastern flavor, creating an extra dimension with his sound through acoustic instruments and using anti-diatonic tuning on this album.

Surf Rock

Surf rock has long been an integral component of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s sound, featuring guitar-driven instrumental music with a California beach/pretty women/cars motif. Dick Dale worked closely with Leo Fender to design more suitable equipment for surf rock music; Beach Boys is among many bands who have adopted this genre and made it famous.

Today’s musicians still create surf rock music. It remains an ever-evolving genre which may draw on elements such as middle Eastern folk music, jazz innovations, baroque sensibilities and Indigenous postcolonial North American music for inspiration.

Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall are modern examples of surf rock bands. Both can help you explore some of the sounds that are associated with King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard, such as those found on Spotify or other streaming services. Both have made many albums known for their energetic live shows.

Metal

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is one of the hardest working bands out there, producing albums at a rate that would leave most bands gasping – five in 2017 alone! Each album they release provides something fresh to experience and their world continues to expand with each release.

On PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and Merciless Damnation, they amp up their intensity for metal fans to experience an exhilarating listening experience that doesn’t let up for fifty minutes straight. Full of nonstop energy that never wavers despite its length.

This album marks the first time they explored conspiracy theories and existentialism lyrically; something they continue to do on each record since. Their approach makes it nearly impossible to play their songs without getting bored while listening to them!