Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava makes good on its title with one of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s most elemental experiments yet; seven tracks, each built on improvisatory jams in one of the seven modes of Western music with just a tempo and a title to guide them. What they’ve ended up with, as one might expect from a band with Gizz’s penchant for genre-hopping, is a thoroughly wide-ranging hour of music that finds them in top form as they let their shared musical chemistry guide them to new places.
The record eases the listener in on the more tame end of the King Gizzard spectrum with the opening “Mycelium”, an ode to mushrooms that sets squiggling guitar lines and chirping organ against saxophone (a welcome addition to the band’s sonic oeuvre, courtesy of Ambrose Kenny-Smith) and a reggae-tinged beat for a lackadaisical jam that finds the band at their most playful. They keep things straightforward but up the ante on “Ice V”, a ripping Latin groove machine reminiscent of early Santana or War that gets fully Gizz-ified with interlocking layers of guitar, keys, and flute towering atop one another alongside one of the album’s best hooks until things have been worked up to a sweaty fever pitch.
From there on IDPLMAL begins to venture into the more free-form territory, with the band melting down their influences and fusing together styles and ideas in ways that feel new and exciting for both the listener and the band members themselves. “Magma” features an acid jazz intro that gets sliced open by a distorted guitar one minute in, sending the group spinning through grimy Middle Eastern riffage that would fit snugly on one of their three microtonal albums and off-kilter funk before reaching its finale where a searing guitar solo is met by doomy group vocals.
“Hell’s Itch” and “Iron Lung” feature similar wanders through the Gizzard garden, where the band’s familiar sonic touchstones are woven – and occasionally smashed – together to form new experiences. The former marks the longest song on the album at over 13 minutes, and while the group’s jamming finds moments of kinetic brilliance it gets undercut by the vocals which stretch a mildly unappealing melody and lyrics (“epidermis” is a word that should really never make its way into a song) across the entirety of the track, not giving the music quite enough time to breathe on its own. “Iron Lung”, though, is a much slicker affair, with Mackenzie and Kenny-Smith trading off vocals over jazzy guitar chords and fluttering flute and saxophone, escalating in intensity with each minute until it morphs suddenly into an explosive blues rock stomp.
King Gizzard also makes use of the freedom of these jams to explore the new musical ground. “Lava” opens with a large atmospheric swell that might be some of the prettiest sounds they’ve laid to tape before giving way to an ominous drum beat and sticky vocal harmonies that call to mind some of Animal Collective’s recent work, while closer “Gliese 710” swirls its way into apocalyptic oblivion as its gloomy piano part is joined by a delightful mess of distorted guitar, organ, and flute while Mackenzie delivers the album’s summary statement (“Freeze the water/Kill the living/Bake the planet/Suffocate the lungs/Grow the mushroom/Feed the volcano/Watch the new star dance upon the night sky”) in one of his finest vocal performances.
The real joy in this album is found in the shared musical language that’s exhibited across its seven tracks. Instruments fold into each other and each player seems to relish the chance to explore these sonic spaces with true abandon together. These might not be King Gizzard’s tightest, or most immediately memorable pieces of songcraft, but their creativity and kinship is on full display here, which is ultimately what this band has always been all about (that and reminding us of impending heat death). Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava opens yet another set of new doors for King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and it’ll be fascinating to see where it may lead them down the road.
