[rating=6.00]
Listening to the Melbourne-based group King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard can be a bit of a mixed bag, to say the least. No two albums sound the same, running the gamut from quirky psych-jazz to protometal to spaghetti western to space rock. Considering how prolific the band is, having released at least one album a year since 2012’s 12 Bar Bruise, 2017 promises to be a record breaker for them, promising five separate releases by year’s end. Many of King Gizzard’s releases have some sort of overarching concept, like Nonagon Infinity’s infinite loop of sound if played on repeat or how the four tracks on Quarters all clock in at exactly ten minutes and ten seconds. The release of Murder of the Universe might be their most “concept-y” album to date.
Murder of the Universe is essentially broken up into three chapters, telling a story of the downfall of man and the death of the planet, with a fantasy/sci-fi like narrative. Each chapter is made up of a multitude of songs segueing from one to another with fade outs and fade ins to denote a chapter separation. Chapter 1 is called “The Tale Of The Altered Beast” in which the tracks generally alternate between a female narrator giving a first person account of some sort of beast going on a mission of destruction while the music continues in the background. These accounts have the tracks “Altered Beast I-IV” inserted between. All these tracks have a pretty similar hard rock- protometal feel to them and serve to continue the narrative in song form. Chapter 2 continues in similar fashion but details an account of an epic battle and is aptly named “The Lord Of Lightning Vs. Balrog”. The tracks in this chapter share the same female narrator and similar musical styling, however, the band adds some synthesizers into the mix to add a bit more of a feel of epic battle to it. The third chapter is probably the weirdest of the three and is called “Han-Tyumi And The Murder Of The Universe.” It details the journey of a cyborg named Han-Tyumi who yearns to experience that which makes us human and thus creates some sort of humanoid creatures in the track “Soy-Protein Munt Machine.” Most of the chapter is taken up with the robotic voice of the cyborg that seems to be unusually obsessed with vomit before destroying the universe.
With King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard promising to release a total of five albums this year, Murder of the Universe seems likely to be the weirdest release of the year. Earlier this year saw the release of the more psyched out and busy Flying Microtonal Banana and they have announced they will next release a jazz-based, improv- leaning collection entitled Sketches Of Brunswick East. With Murder of the Universe, King Gizzard have definitely created an album that will see a polarizing love v. hate of the release for many fans. However, with another release only months away and two more before the end of the year chances, are high that fans of the band will connect with at least one of their releases this year.
