King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard's seventeenth album arrives as a full-throated thrash metal record, seven tracks of apocalyptic riffing that abandons the Melbourne band's usual genre-hopping for sustained heaviness. Stu Mackenzie and Joey Walker handle guitars, bass and production alongside their bandmates, building walls of distortion around Michael Cavanagh's pummelling drums. Motor Spirit opens with palm-muted chug before exploding into double-kick fury. Gila Monster and Dragon push past six minutes each, stretching single ideas into hypnotic, doom-laden mantras.
The album's title promises annihilation and the music delivers. Flamethrower lives up to its name with scorched-earth riffing, while Supercell batters through tempo changes that never quite settle. Three vocalists trade lines across the tracklist, their voices buried just enough in the mix to feel like another texture rather than a focal point. Jason Galea's artwork matches the tone: volcanic reds and blackened skies.
Anyone who thought King Gizzard couldn't commit to a single sound for forty-five minutes has their answer. This is the band at their most focused and their least interested in pleasing everyone. The garage and surf tags from their back catalogue are nowhere in sight. Just relentless, head-down metal that sounds like it was made by people who have listened to a lot of Sabbath and decided subtlety was optional.
