King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are ridiculous on every level. From their work rate, to their album titles, to their name and ultimately to their stage performances. Nonagon Infinity follows their previous release Paper Maché Dream Balloon that was only dropped in September of last year, doing what most bands do in a fraction of the time using an audacious combination of seven members; this would cause a headache just thinking about it never mind orchestrating the chaos that ensues. In fact, this is their eighth release in four years; it’s acid fuelled, tense, uptight and everything else you’d expect from so many bodies shifting under the guise of a band title that sounds like the evil boss from some obscure 80s Sega game. It’s a miracle how all the incoordination and pandemonium can leave the band verging on chaos but hitting the ground running at all times.

Two things seem to be key to the sound of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, that’s velocity and bedlam; every sound that comes from the seven piece hits you with the force of a jet engine. The point of Nonagon Infinity is that it never ends, creating some ludicrous, fast paced vortex that whips around you. Every song runs into the next, there is no obvious end to any track other than perhaps a split second where the next track peeks through. Opening with ‘Robot Stop’, guitars hurl at you with lightning pace as harmonicas blurt away in the background – if this was to be a scene from a film, it would be the point where the plane has already crashed and you are thrust into the debris coming off of its burning metal carcass.

The fact that every song runs to the next is likely to be disconcerting for the majority of music fans as surely it seems to be nothing more than a practical joke from the band. A little bit of an eye-catching novelty. It probably is to an extent. On first listen, you may be unsure if it works; you may question how this can lead to diversity in sound when it is apparently so quick and abrasive from the start. It demands a lot of patience and appreciation for the concept. ‘Big Fat Wasp’, the song that falls at number two in the listing really doesn’t change too distinctly from the opener. Is there much point in making it a track in its own right? This continuous notion works and fails to different extents throughout the LP. The first two falter, but the transition between ‘Gamma Knife’ and ‘People Vultures’ begins to shine acid-spiked lights on the positives to such an innovative idea. Instead of the transition being built upon quick fire rhythms, it is built around a resonating guitar line that leaves a little more room for dynamic and variation in sound.

The obvious development in sound within Nonagon Infinity is credit to the restless nature of the band. Often, if somebody was to mention a band that releases not just the occasional single but full-length LPs on such a frequent basis, you may assume that the material was to inevitably falter – or at least fall peril to the same sound running throughout all their material, thus suggesting no real purpose in another release. King Gizzard have moved towards a heavier sound with Nonagon Infinity – the psychedelics and garage-rock antics are certainly still there, however, eerie moves towards electronica also stimulate the sound. As well as this, there are shimmies towards the hair-metal of the 70s and 80s, Deep Purple, Metallica and Sabbath all play a large role in the sound and ultimately act as the basis and modus operandi to the album.

As the carnival-psychedelia of ‘Mr Beat’ simmers out with its summer buzz lyricism, it rolls into the first real slice of this new metal push, ‘Evil Death Roll’. ‘Evil Death Toll’ picks up on the haunting synth resonation that is left from the previous song before morphing into the quick fire explosion of Rainbow-styled guitar riffs all with the signature touch of Stu Mackenzie’s frantic yelp. This sound becomes a staple point of the album in hindsight – it is this that separates this LP from the previous efforts from Melbourne’s finest. From heady psychedelia to slow-jammed folk, it seems that King Gizzard are just getting wilder and more far-flung with every release they rack up. It’s exciting though, trying to predict when the wheels will surely fly off. It’s a mirage of space jams, fuzz, incoordination and hysteria. You can never pinpoint where the sound will flail to next.

Largely too, it’s a complete dance through their own colourful past towards the back end of the album. Some of the abrasive fuzz overtones are found from 2014’s I’m In Your Mind Fuzz, some of the lower key, acoustic jam sounds from 2015’s Paper Maché Dream Balloon also surface towards the centrepiece of ‘Invisible Face’ and those huge psychedelic guitar jams from 2013’s Float Along also stick about through ‘Wah Wah’. So where on earth, or even in this universe does this leave King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard with their first, and surely not final, release of 2016? Well, it seems that like the restless individuals they seem to be, their sound is just as restless. They don’t have a signature sound persé but in fact their signature sound is oddly found between their albums; it lies in the transitional murky periods and morphing of new sounds between their albums. Nonagon Infinity is just as confused as you’d expect their music to be by this point and in fact, that is their sound – ‘confused’. That’s what makes it exciting though. They play around with the literal and onomatopoeic; ‘Road Train’ moves towards their signature of Nonagon Infinity with the metal sound of those huge chugging guitar moves – it sounds like a train though, pumping along the tracks at some hurly-burly speed.

As the end of Nonagon Infinity plays through with ‘Road Train’, it falls back into the beginning of ‘Robot Stop’. It’s the King Gizzard twister that you are buried within throughout Nonagon Infinity. You spin around with the band at all times pointing towards their past with each song and sound, you end up caught in the cyclone that sent Dorothy off in the Wizard of Oz and there’s no real escape. The intensity and confrontation is certainly not for everyone. It is likely to divide their fans for sure and critics will be left scratching their heads trying to piece together the album. The irony at which lies in that it is already pieced together, perfectly. It would appear that King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are in a position where they can make such brave, intriguing decisions as they are likely to release another effort in six months and puzzle everyone once more. Three cheers to the most exciting band that are recording for us nowadays.
Tom Churchill

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