King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: Alien Metal 
Out Now
Album number 28 (that’s TWENTY EIGHT) from Melbourne’s most prolific globetrotters reveals itself as a beautiful technological monster, complete with 90s rave sounds and a wall of Roland-adjacent noise. MK Bennett remembers fondly.
There’s a freedom in what King Gizzard do that is almost nostalgic, almost romantic. A yearning for the simpler times when a band did whatsoever it liked, the nature of art being creation, not commerce. Not so long ago, what they do would have been undoubtedly considered a hindrance. This great panoply of sound they create, with its mass congruence of influences that they keep under the umbrella of, and in the name of, the King Gizzard conglomerate. They do things differently, to the point that people trust them to deliver, regardless of this week’s genre. The wandering spirit meets a past/future aesthetic and everyone is along for the ride.
Sapience kicks us into hyperspace from the off, a rampant and rampaging delight of programming excellence; it drops you into a darkened basement, chemically or otherwise enhanced, a Proustian tangerine rush back to the first time you heard Josh Wink while memories and moments fly past, shards of the old, splinters of the new. It chops and changes, and a very happy hardcore keyboard arrives through the mist and takes control of the situation. Wonderful opener, setting its stall out very handsomely. Alien Metal achieves a rare accolade: it would fit unnoticed on Exit Planet Dust, one of the great albums of electronica and a high watermark of perfect sound production. It still sounds remarkable now and this sits comfortably with it. Every blip, bleep and vocodered voice is a call from your past. It is also reminiscent of the mighty Henge, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The breakdown and rebuild at the end is heavenly; it will snap the synapses of the willing into very sharp relief. The memory of an era that they are almost certainly too young to remember, but the rave remains the same.
Superheavy, Supercritical maintains the excellence, and is a reminder that this is no facsimile of the past, no photocopied rehash of someone else’s glory, because no matter what King Gizzard touch, no matter how far they veer into the exploration of the musical everything, they have a unique way with their writing that means there’s always a hint of discordance, some worms beneath the grass that renders everything they release as another worthwhile chapter in a long and storied book. It is that inexplicable other that separates them yet also binds their music. With the bass drum well to the fore and the vocal sample (or wizardry that seems to be a sample), it cuts and runs before dropping into a deep rhythmic trench that should last for hours but sadly only lasts four minutes before the breakdown and rebuild back into the home straight while something squeaks and squeals on the side. Heavenly. Kill For The Steel is a deep and cavernous rumble through an imaginary sci-fi dancehall, peaks and troughs until the end of the world. Masses of drums, near tribal and wholly hypnotic, fill the senses while a four note keyboard riff drags you back into the (non) reality. The soundtrack to the cavern scenes once Neo made it back home, The Matrix from a secondary perspective.
Level 5 starts with more voice manipulation before the Liam Howlett-like hammering beat kicks in. The Prodigy when they were still hungry, it’s a glorious slice of future retro classicisms and spine troubling noise filtering, a beast with no chance of being tamed and another example, which runs through this beautiful record like a stick of Blackpool rock, of the almost supernatural wonder with which they approach the voice box/vocoder. This musicianly approach, rather than a technicians cold hands elevates the whole thing, constantly. Rapid Alpha Decay is a little smoother but is the alpha example of the manipulation of their own melodies, just before an almighty sub-bass drops in and we carry on, part prog, part electronica, a little William Orbit (RIP) before it skitters and slides off into hyperspace. Theres a thematic link musically, as if they have made a mix album but carved in their own inimitable and polymathic image, carved by their novice but knowing hands.
Uqt is that time of night in the basement or the warehouse when your legally prescribed chemicals force you into the decision. Are you too tired to dance, to carve out your own space on the dusted dancefloor or have the endorphins from the bass drum, the fried and delirious cells in your entire body got other ideas that you are no longer party to? You know the answer, and as the slow, slow build to Atomic Collapse pours itself into kaleidoscopic focus, you are at the centre of something, and you will yourself to stay there. Memory is a lie but the music remains. This is the end of the journey, a laser guided melody. Six and half minutes of space craft and spacecrafts, it ends the album on an exhilarated high, and another wonderful entry in King Gizzard’s seemingly inexhaustible ability to craft perfection from thin air.
By accident or design, if you are missing Leftfield, Underworld or the Chemical Brothers themselves, this is your new happy place, because whether you are broadly familiar with the past placeholders or not, this will make you want to dance in a field in 1994. It can be offered no higher accolade than its achievement in the Proustian memory department. You can smell the madeleines. A genuinely thrilling thing that will likely turn up on every marketing trailer and TikTok to denote the opposite of what this actually is, a joyous ride through the restless heads and hearts of the Millennial generation’s most prolific and adventurous travellers.
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All words by MK Bennett, you can find his author’s archive here plus his Twitter and Instagram
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Just checked, I’ve got 9 of their 28 albums – each one a portrait, a marvel in its own right! Saw the band in Manchester 7 years ago after discovering them (on KEXP) and felt I had gatecrashed someone else’s party – the genre-hopping confused me…
I’ve since learnt to embrace the change.
Great review – I’m about to make it ten.
Oh behave. The musically incontinent Gizzards vs The Prodigy? If ever there was an argument for quality not quantity it’s King Gizzard and his riffing pals spaffing their endless slop into your local record shop – before reissuing it again and again and again and again. If you want some decent dance music and are “missing” Leftfield, the Chems and Underworld (all of who are still active so I’m sure you won’t have to wait too long) get on Bandcamp or Beatport where your actual dance music producers, artists and bands are ready to move your feet and rearrange your brain. Clear some space on your record shelves for artists who have some quality control.