Genre-hopping joys from King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard were bound to come to an end. Any musician keen to explore as prolifically as the Australian band has in the last fifteen years should be hailed regardless of results. It’s fantastic that so much of the work to come from the group has been a fantastic endeavour, from the narrative build between Flight b741 and Phantom Island, to preceding joys with PetroDragonic Apocalypse. But recent efforts from the band have fallen a touch flat as the genre exploration becomes a gimmick rather than a gift to their sound and listeners’ ears. Alien Metal follows up Mango Sticky Rice and marks an uncomfortable middle ground for the group as they struggle to decide where they want to head next. Do they want to delve deeper and further away from the rock sub-genre prowess they displayed over the last few years? It sounds as though they’re unsure as to what their next move is, and it makes Alien Metal a touch unstable.
But that’s what makes it such a thrill. This is, as is expected with King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard at this point, unexpected. They’ve made genre-hopping an art form, and that gives them room to fail and experiment. But with Alien Metal they strike on a tempo and tone that suits the band, while also dragging them away from the usual tropes of rock and roll. Electronic dance music feels quite out there for a band who, just last year, sounded as though they had hit a comfortable progressive-rock groove. If you come across Alien Metal in the right mood, it’s an absolute delight. Given the heatwave has most of us sweating away, you can simulate the atmosphere of a club where this would no doubt be played with strobe lighting by flashing a camera torch on and off, directly into your eyes. A great time to be had on songs like Sapience and the title track, which bleed into one another so effortlessly.
Those segues come to be a little more obvious for Alien Music into Superheavy, Supercritical, but the end result is all the same. It’s all about maintaining tempo here with a variety of new instrumental hooks and fillers. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are in delightful form here. It drifts a little into Group Therapy, an Above & Beyond release that occasionally announces the name of the group and listening experience over the noise it manufactures. “What a feeling,” is what Superheavy, Supercritical leans into. It’d be a better feeling without that repetition but then the excuse of experimentation carries a heavy load. Consistency is key though and Alien Metal never lets up in that energetic approach. Level 5 feels a bit on the nose given preceding songs sound as though they’re lifted from a canned Crash Bandicoot space level, but nice enough all the same. A light experience is still a fun experience, and that’ll do for King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s continued experimentation.
Alien Metal comes apart just a little, but Uqt salvages it. A thumping, electronic high that ties the album together nicely. You start to hear the band burst back into a guitar-led, thrill-seeking mission, its absence before that letting listeners yearn for it that little bit more. Deny a listener the chance to hear it, and they’ll appreciate it even more, and that’s exactly what happens here. A strong double bill of songs to close out Alien Metal makes up for that slump, but even then, those moments capture a space-age appeal that King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard feel to be natural bedfellows. A nice experiment and less of a misfire than the preceding album, it’s enough to get the band back into the good books. Alien Metal may leave a little more to be desired, especially when you consider the untouchable spot they found themselves in just three years ago, but we must champion material that honestly challenges a listener, even when some of it isn’t quite as up to scratch as it should be.
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