Why Music? Too (2) Modern Edition: A listener’s guide to King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard/Seven Exceptional Records

I’m quoting myself from last time, but It bears repeating:

Music therapy may sometimes look like entertainment, but it is so much more. Although it is certainly true that engaging in music and music making can be fun, the essence of music therapy is deeper. Exploring our relationships to music (what it means to us and why) helps us learn about who we are as people. When we know ourselves better, we can express ourselves better and form stronger connections with others. This important work of exploring meaningful music is not just for music therapy clients. Music therapists must do their own personal work outside of sessions. How can we help others develop deep musical relationships if we don’t have our own? 

What are the best bands of our time? What music will endure in our culture or for us personally? Who knows? I’m not really here to tell you what the best band of all time is, but it could be King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (just “King Gizzard” is fine). 

If you have friends who are into new music,(indie/psychedelic/experimental/electronic/jammy [sometimes metal] rock) then you might have heard the name King Gizzard floated as a recommendation. However, as of August of 2025 King Gizzard has 27 studio albums. Most of these albums are fairly different from each other, so where do you as a curious new listener begin? 

Start here! My opinion is that King Gizzard has many good records, and for me there are seven that are exceptionally good. My goal in this listener’s guide is to help you if you are interested in exploring different styles of modern rock and not to bore you, so I will be brief (and irreverent) in my comments about these records. I’ll stick to the flavor, gimmick, why the gimmick does or doesn’t matter and then list two or three standout tracks. Quick note: King Gizzard is not on Spotify because “Spotify CEO Daniel Ek invests millions in AI military drone technology”, so go to Youtube or some other place to check it out. Here we go:

1: Omnium Gatherum (April 2022)

[all styles]

Flavor: A hodgepodge of styles, this is a great sampler platter of everything King Gizzard.

Gimmick: Gather em all! All the styles of tracks that did not make it on a full album in that style. There is a lot here from psych rock, synth pop, future soul, metal, Beastie-Boys-Style rapping, classic rock, a silly song about a garden goblin...

Does the gimmick matter? Not necessarily. Here is an album where the tracks sound different from each other. If you like that, then this is one for you, if not, maybe skip onto the next one!

Standout tracks: The Dripping Tap, Magenta Mountain, Kepler-22b

2: Butterfly 3000 (June 2021)

[synth pop]

Flavor: Bright bubblegum synth pop with a twist.

Gimmick: Each track has a central melody that is x-and-a-half beats long and, when it repeats, is then flipped to begin on the up beat or down beat (depending), so the accents of the melody are recontextualized in each repetition. This sounds complicated, but it is not.

Does the gimmick matter? Yes… 100% it gives depth and intrigue to the otherwise catchy, sugary melodies. Start bobbin mmm g your head and you will understand the gimmick. Even if you don’t understand it, it enhances the music. 

Standout tracks: Yours, Catching Smoke

3: Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava (Oct 2022)

(Jammy)

Flavor: These tracks are on the longish side with four running over nine minutes long as the band jams in each of the seven modes.

Gimmick: If you don’t know what a mode is, consider just the white keys on a piano. If you played a C scale up to C (Ionian or major scale), that is the first mode featured on the album, and then they proceed with Dorian (D to D), Phrygian (E to E), Lydian (F to F), Mixolydian (G to G), Aeolian (A to A), and finally Locrian (B to B). Each mode has a unique sound due to their particular assortment of flatted or sharped scale degrees in comparison with the traditional Ionian. Go to a piano or keyboard and try it out! 

Does the gimmick matter? Not really, but it makes long jammy tracks more interesting to listen to, and some of these modes are pretty rare for rock music. This is a pretty chill record in general.

Standout tracks: Ice V, Lava

4: Infest the Rats Nest (Aug 2019)

(Thrash Metal)

Flavor: Climate Terror Thrash Metal. King Gizzard imagines the cruelties of a society destroyed by climate change. 

Gimmick: In 2019 this band is not known for metal (let alone climate change metal), and they play it extremely well. What is climate change metal? “Open your eyes and see; there is no planet B”-- This sentiment reverberates as the listener is thrown into a speculative fiction where Mars is terraformed for the rich, the poor die in disease and squalor on a ruined Earth, and desperate others flee for Venus just to burn up upon entry. 

Does the gimmick matter? If you like ripping guitar solos and scary music it does. 

Some clarification here: climate change as a topic can’t really be considered a gimmick for King Gizzard as it is present across so many of their records. Maybe half-gimmick credit here because it shows up so intensely on this one. 

Standout tracks: Mars for the Rich, Venusian 1

5: The Silver Cord (Oct 2023)

(Euro Synth/Techno/Dance)

Flavor: Convincingly 80s style European electronic dance music with a little of the Beastie-Boys-Style rapping. There are a lot of synthesizers on this record including modular, drum machines, and vocoder effects. They can recreate this sound live too! 

Gimmick: Beyond just being a unique style of music for them, there are two cuts of this album. One with short versions of each track that totals 28mins and one with extended cuts that runs 88mins so you can dance forever. 

Does the gimmick matter? I think it’s nice to have two cuts available. I have only listened to the shortened version, but I don’t think it would be bad to disco it out to the long cuts either. 

Standout tracks: Gilgamesh, Swan Song

6: Flying Microtonal Banana (Feb 2017)

(Microtonal Psych Rock)

Flavor: Turkish? Psych Rock. They sing in English, but the guitars have extra frets between the normal frets for microtonal tuning. This is largely drony sounding psych rock about the post apocalypse. 

Gimmick: The back of the record humbly reads, “we continually dumbed down the rhythmic complexity in favour of harmonic entanglement. Harmonies that are out of tune. Nothing is sacred! And neither is this album. 24-TET (tone equal temperament) everybody. Wronger than wrong.” 

Does the gimmick matter? Oh yeah… this is a great record. The microtonal instruments give the melodies a uniquely dirty sound. You might have to listen multiple times to get used to it, but the payoff is worth it!

Standout tracks: Rattlesnake, Melting, Sleep Drifter

7: PetroDragonic Apocalypse… (June 2023)

(Motor metal)

Flavor: Double kick, speed, motor, progressive metal. It is fast, loud, and ripping. No prisoners. Echos of Motorhead, early Metallica, bits of Tool.

Gimmick: This is some more climate change metal. There is a spooky end-of-the-world spoken story about a pet Gila monster that grows into a dragon and consumes the world on side D of the record. The true gimmick is the homage to speed metal.

Does the gimmick matter? This is a matter of preference, both in terms of speed metal and climate change as a subject. In general, I prefer this subject in metal to dark fantasy or occult topics. Side note: this is not the only metal band exploring climate change. Meshuggah goes there (though somewhat subtly) in their album Immutable. 

Standout tracks: Dragon, Flamethrower

Did you make it?!!! Good for you! 

Go Listen!