Band:	King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
Album:	Infest The Rats' Nest
Style:	Stoner metal, Thrash metal
Release date:	August 16, 2019
A review by:	RaduP

01. Planet B
02. Mars For The Rich
03. Organ Farmer
04. Superbug
05. Venusian 1
06. Perihelion
07. Venusian 2
08. Self-Immolate
09. Hell

They fucking did it! King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard did a thrash metal album!

The aussie jam band that seems to bend their sound into a special concept in each album, from microtonal instruments, an album that loops forever, a boogie album, a collab with a jazz band, to a fucking spaghetti western one; the list goes on. Needless to say, their back catalog is quite impressive, both in size (they released five albums in 2017 alone) and in the surprising quality that a material spread over so many sounds would have. But even at their most exploratory, all of their albums clearly felt like King Gizz albums. And now they fucking did a metal album. And it's not just a slightly heavier version of their usual garage/psych jam rock, they even got the snobs at Metal-Archives to add them based on this album.

Sure, they dipped their toes in heavier sounds on previous albums as well, but Infest The Rats' Nest is definitely heavier than anything they've ever done before. The sound is a lot less jammy, the vocals are a lot rougher, the fuzz is a lot deeper, and the whole thing still feels as fun as ever without it feeling like a parody. After all what better style of music to present the end of times from climate change and corrupt rich than some punky and psychedelic thrash metal? [Maybe death industrial, but we may get something like that someday, you never know.] The sound throughout the album isn't consistently thrash, with some songs being closer to a punky Motörhead and others like "Superbug" are clear Black Sabbath worship.

And even at its thrashiest, there is a clear sense that it is a King Gizz album, with its slightly offbeat production and studio trickery that are clear indicators of their sound, not to mention the slightly jammy tendencies. There is a lot less of the latter, especially since King Gizz have chopped up their lineup for this record, with most members having little no contribution, leaving only a power trio behind, with guitarists and bassists changing on different songs. This does create a much more direct and muscular King Gizz album, with riffs and solos abound, threading fairly close to the material they homage. Sometimes too close.

It's fun. It's vicious. It's hopefully not the last time we see King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard flirting with metal.



They even made a fucking video game for it.