Inside King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s Hard Dance Experiment: ‘This Is Some Mad Scientist Sh–‘
Australian band King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have released Alien Metal, their 28th studio album, marking their most forceful move into high-tempo dance music. The album matters because the group, usually associated with garage and psychedelic rock, replaced guitars with a shared modular synthesiser and spent unusually long refining the material.
Released on 14 August, Alien Metal was developed over several years in the band’s Melbourne warehouse studio using a Eurorack rig nicknamed Nathan. The sextet discarded more material than on any previous record, while continuing to develop and abandon other projects; they will bring the new setup to their Field of Vision festival near Denver and four New York shows later this month.
- King Gizzard’s 28th album is a hard dance experiment.
- The band replaced guitars with a shared modular synthesiser.
- Unusually extensive revisions shaped the album.
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King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are a prolific Australian six-piece known for moving between styles, including psychedelic rock, garage rock, metal and electronic music. Since forming in Melbourne in 2010, they have built a following through frequent releases, energetic live shows and a willingness to experiment.
Hard dance is a broad term for fast, heavy electronic music built around strong beats and synthesised sounds. The band’s new approach centres on a modular synthesiser, an instrument made of connected electronic units that can create and alter sounds in many ways.
The change is notable because the group has usually been associated with guitar-led music, even when exploring other genres. It also reflects the growing overlap between rock bands and electronic music, with artists using studio technology as part of both recording and live performance.
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