King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard put out Alien Metal tomorrow, Friday, August 14 through their own p(doom) Records, their 28th studio album, eight tracks long, issued on vinyl, CD, cassette and digitally. The band who made Infest The Rats’ Nest and PetroDragonic Apocalypse have used a metal title for their deepest run at electronic dance music yet.
The whole thing was written and recorded on a Eurorack modular setup the band call Nathan, the rig they took on the road last year for a run of rave shows where they left their instruments at home. Stu Mackenzie came to the format on Joey Walker‘s recommendation and did not come back the same.
“It completely rewired my brain,” Mackenzie said. “I was like, I’m going to forget everything I know about music and relearn it all from scratch.”
Getting to eight finished tracks cost them a great deal more. “We’ve never scrapped so much material as we have for this album,” he said. “Entire albums, entire universes that were formulated, created, recorded, deleted, and started again.”
Walker broke down where the songs land: “Alien Metal goes really hard, but it also goes to really interesting places. And it feels unique — it feels like us, still. ‘Sapience‘ is this pulsating techno neo-rave thing. The other tracks go to such weird, interesting places. ‘Level 5‘ is early Prodigy and early hardcore jungle, and ‘Superheavy‘ is heading towards house, while ‘Kill for the Steel‘ feels like weird IDM, with some heavy Miami Bass in there.”
Three tracks are already out. “Level 5” came first in July with a video by Hayden Somerville, followed by the title track and then “Kill For The Steel” on Tuesday, both carrying visuals from longtime collaborator Jason Galea.
The album lands on the opening day of Field Of Vision II, the band’s own festival in Meadow Creek, Colorado, running August 14 to 16 and already sold out. Blood Incantation, W.I.T.C.H., Die Spitz, La Luz, Spacemoth and Folk B**ch Trio are also on the bill, and all three days will be streamed free on the band’s YouTube channel — 45 hours of it. These are their first proper shows since December.
New York follows: three nights at Forest Hills Stadium from August 20, with the third billed as a rave show alongside DāM-FunK, then another at Under The K Bridge Park in Brooklyn on August 23 with .VRIL. Australian dates arrive in October, including a two-day takeover of the Croxton Block Party in Melbourne.
The band remains Mackenzie on vocals and guitar, Ambrose Kenny-Smith on harmonica, vocals and keyboards, Cook Craig and Walker on guitars and vocals, Lucas Harwood on bass and Michael Cavanagh on drums.
Alien Metal tracklist:
- “Sapience”
- “Alien Metal”
- “Superheavy, Supercritical”
- “Kill For The Steel”
- “Level 5”
- “Rapid Alpha Decay”
- “Uqt”
- “Atomic Collapse”
