It's hard to believe anyone reading this doesn't know who King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are by now, but I'll give a recap. This is the 28th studio album by the shape-shifting Australian collective. What started as a few guys playing psychedelic surf-punk prog jams (or something like that) in 2010 has morphed into one of the top-selling vinyl acts in the world. Their politics have led them to abandon Spotify for pay-what-you-like on Bandcamp (please kick in at least a buck). They've released polytonal, thrash, funk, you-name-it albums. They've done shows with symphonies and most recently, a "rave" tour. This album is partly the result of that latest experience.

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard Alien Metal (P(doom) Records)

Which is to say that it is an EDM album. Kinda. EDM as imagined by the manic, polyrhythm-exploding, mind-expanding and generally on-the-edge-of-batshit minds that seem incapable of standing still. Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the band will hear about five seconds of this and ask, "KGLW EDM?" Yes, indeed.

Which raises two questions. "Is it good EDM?" and "Is it good KGLW?" Well, yes. The "band" is coy about who played what on this album (as opposed to 2023's The Silver Cord, a largely-electronic album that still incorporated "regular" instruments throughout), but Stu Mackenzie remains the composer, and the other members have figured out how to fill out this new musical persona.

This album appears after the longest gap between studio releases, and apparently the band wrote, recorded and scrapped many albums worth of material--which, y'know, might find its way into one project or another in the future. Maybe one future record store day ten albums will just show up. With these guys, you never know.

Anyway, my words will have almost no influence on the legion of fans who have already played this album (which contains individual songs, but is gapless and really does play as one long piece) on an endless loop since its arrival a couple weeks ago. Nonetheless, this latest chapter is a worthy entrant into the canon. Totally mindblowing? Perhaps not. But certainly fun and a lot loonier than your average EDM album. At this point, the KGLW experience is less about individual songs or albums and rather total sonic immersion. My favorites remain the fully polytonal albums of last decade, but every new release seems to find a way to inject that KGLW spirit into another galaxy of the musical universe. The only real question with this band is "What's next?"

Jon Worley