The problem with this album is that the concepts get in the way of the songs. You actually get three concepts for the price of one: There’s a fable about an “Altered Beast,” a climactic battle between light and darkness and a very strange tale about a vomiting cyborg that causes the titular event. While King Gizzard have always centered their albums around concepts, it’s possible that “Murder of the Universe” is their first proper concept album. The band followed that up with “Murder of the Universe” in late June. “Doom City” is rendered uninhabitable by pollution, rising sea levels threaten “Open Water,” and climate change wreaks havoc on “Melting” (“Vanishing ices / Worse than ISIS / Worse than the most deadly virus”). But you’ll want to pay attention to the lyrics, which have a haunting focus on impending ecological catastrophe brought on by humans. The tension doesn’t let up even on slower numbers like the slinky, sinister “Sleep Drifter.” Even if you don’t know a thing about microtonal tuning, “Flying Microtonal Banana” is a wild musical thrill ride. Coiled and ready to strike like the reptile for which it was named, it maintains its jittery groove for nearly eight minutes. Opening track “Rattlesnake” is a good example of the sounds they were going for. In Western music theory, tones separate the notes of the scale, with semitones indicating sharp or flat versions of those notes King Gizzard utilized special instruments that could play the quarter tones between tones and semitones, allowing them to tap into a wider - and, for want of a better word, more exotic - set of sounds. King Gizzard’s 2017 run kicked off with February’s “Flying Microtonal Banana,” a hilariously-titled foray into microtonal music. If you were following King Gizzard’s efforts, you already know what the fuss is about if you’re new to the band, read my rundown of the five albums, then set aside three and a half hours to hear for yourself. While that’s plenty impressive in and of itself, the most remarkable thing about King Gizzard’s endeavor is that all five albums have their own distinct flavor and that they’re all worth a listen. They cut it damn close, but they came through, releasing their fifth LP with just hours to spare. (The only other artist I can think of who can put out music as fast, often faster, is Gucci Mane). Before that, they released an album with four songs, each of them exactly 10 minutes and 10 seconds long, aptly named “Quarters!” They’re also one of the most prolific bands in recent memory “Nonagon Infinity” was their eighth album in five years, but it was also a rare instance where King Gizzard put out only one album in a calendar year.īut I don’t think anyone could have predicted what would follow “Nonagon Infinity.” Near the end of 2016, King Gizzard announced that they were gearing up to release five albums in 2017. Their breakout album, 2016’s “Nonagon Infinity,” was a nine-track opus whose songs formed a continuous loop of music that you could play for 42 minutes or 42 hours. For the past eight years, the down-under rockers have fashioned themselves as something of an Aussie Flaming Lips, approaching every new album with a mix of playfulness and experimentation. Loads of artists released better albums last year, but there was no better band in 2017 than King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard.
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