King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have released... an old-skool thrash album?

Aussie psychedelicists King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard go very metal on Infest The Rat's Nest

By Johnny Sharp
( Classic Rock )
published
King Gizzard & The Wizard Lizard
(Image: © Flightless Records)

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King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Inside The Rats' Nest

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Infest The Rat's Nest

(Image credit: Flightless Records)

Planet B
Mars for the Rich
Organ Farmer
Superbug
Venusian 1
Perihelion
Venusian 2
Self-Immolate
Hell

No worries if a new King Gizzard & The Wizard Lizard album is not to your taste – there’ll be another one along in a minute. And some of their fanbase may rely on that consolation on this fifteenth album – their second this year – because Infest The Rats’ Nest ditches lysergic quirkpop for a crack at big-four era thrash metal. 

No, really. It could have been as cringeworthy as a sludgecore band attempting reggae, but while tongues may edge towards cheeks on lyrics such as Perihelion’s reference to ‘eating sinners for dinner’, their passion for thrashin’ sounds pretty real. 

Frontman Stu Mackenzie nails a Hetfield-esque gurgle from the galloping, squiddle-spattered opener Planet B, and it’s hard to resist the rat-a-tat riff and stuttering vocal of Self-immolate or the insistent turbo-Sabbath churn of Mars For The Rich. 

Ambient free jazz next?

Johnny Sharp
Johnny Sharp

Johnny is a regular contributor to Prog and Classic Rock magazines, both online and in print. Johnny is a highly experienced and versatile music writer whose tastes range from prog and hard rock to R’n’B, funk, folk and blues. He has written about music professionally for 30 years, surviving the Britpop wars at the NME in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent and magazines such as Uncut, Record Collector and, of course, Prog and Classic Rock.