Friday Feature: King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard

How have I never featured King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard back when the Sunday Spotlight was weekly.

With a few more weeks of the Friday Feature before we hit the silly season, it's time to put the spotlight on Stu Mackenzie, Ambrose Kenny-Smith, Cook Craig, Joey Walker, Lucas Harwood + Michael Cavanagh, the gang that makes up King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard.

Forming in 2010 in Melbourne, Victoria, the band's known for exploring multiple genres, staging energetic live shows and building a prolific discography, having released twenty-one studio albums, fourteen live albums, three compilations and three EPs.

In 2017, the band fulfilled a promise to release five studio albums within the year: Flying Microtonal Banana, an experiment in microtonality, in February; the three-chapter "sci-fi heavy metal epic" Murder of the Universe in June; Sketches of Brunswick East, an improvised jazz collaboration with Mild High Club, in August; Polygondwanaland, was released into the public domain, in November; and Gumboot Soup in December.

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard was ranked No. 21 in a list of the world's hardest working musicians. This was earned due to the amount of live shows they played from January 2018 to August 2019—totalling to 113 live performances both domestically and internationally.

 The 2019 albums Fishing for Fishies & Infest the Rats' Nest saw the band tackle environmental themes and incorporate boogie rock and thrash metal into their sound, respectively.

In the 2020s, the band released two further microtonal studio albums, K.G. and L.W., and the synth-based dream pop album Butterfly 3000 as well as several live albums, a concert film, and two compilations. 

In 2022, King Gizzard released Made in Timeland, their first double album Omnium Gatherum and will release three further albums in October of the same year.

So 2022 is another massive year for the hardest working Victorian group. The Friday Feature will continue through October and November ahead of the Summer Music Lists returning in December.