If you happened to chance along the Fairmount Theatre Tuesday, you might have reckoned with a new factoid: the aptly named King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard melts your face with toe-curling psychedelic acid rock waves of sound. The legendary live performers from Melbourne were upstairs riffing their faithful into a frenzy and rocking the house, literally.
Things started modestly with the first opening act Stonefield, an all-female four piece garage band from Victoria, AU. They began with some heavy droning blues jams, eventually moving to more vocal songs with a serious twang, showcasing the impressive melodic pipes of front lady Amy Findlay. She howled out the old John Lee Hooker while keeping it tight on the drumkit, and the crowd in front methodically and slowly banged their heads in unison as the guitar licks got serious, courtesy of her sisters Hannah and Holly. Sarah, the fourth sister in the troop, completed the circle on the keyboard, adding a psychedelic flavour that was to only increase as the night went on.
Next opener was Orb, a three piece all-male Auzzie band that went directly into some Black Sabbath inspired territory. The hesitant but synchronized heavy bass / lead guitar riffs were hauntingly decorated with the eerie vocals of lead man Zak Olsen. However, like Stonefield, the pace was a bit slow for the expectations of the audience. I could hear other fans humming the melody to KGLW’s “Cellophane” during Orb’s set while getting drinks. The lyrics of his final piece chimed out “Getting hungry while I sleep / while I count sheep” seemed a bit fitting for a crowd increasingly impatient for the fast-paced shreds of King Gizzard.
Five minutes into the Gizzard set, the floor was shaking. Standing back at the bar, disoriented by the slamming sounds, I checked my glass, where the booze was shaking. I then checked my memory to recall if there was any subway line underneath the Fairmount. There was not.
Sometimes in life you make compromises, othertimes you listen to bands that compromise the structural integrity of buildings. This night, to say the least, was a mosh pit to remember. Underneath a blinding visual projector, fans aged from their fake-ID teens to mid-40s were seen brushing past to break into the melee, only to re-emerge soon after, increasingly dishevelled, drenched in sweat, with dizzy smile to share. A strange force was uniting nerdy looking teenagers with old pacemakers like myself. The thing about King Gizzard is they tap into the creepy, weird, and dare I say, dank sounds of psychedelia and early 70s metal, but on top of it, they crank the speed-dial five times past the limit. Once this electric pace was put upon the crowd, having waited 2 hours previous with their slow bridesmaids, the people on the floor literally lost their minds.
We punched in early to iterations of Alter-Beast and Rattlesnake, along with selections off their latest “Microtonal Banana”, only to be mercifully given a break and some peace with The River. The crowd-surfers got some water. The faint of heart slowly edged their back to the wall. This special piece, first off their album “Quarters” dives into some funky off-beat jams that had the crowd feeling light and cheering on every shift in the tune. People relaxed, whistled, and we all sang happy-birthday to Eric, the drummer/manager who was presented a fine sparkly-endowed cake. A unique fan threw a banana on stage. Lead singer Stu was confused. Then, at last, came the trigger we all knew they had in store: machine-gun speed selections from Nonagon Infinity like Gamma Knife and People Vultures.
Shaking the drywall off the door frames while hypnotizing Montreal’s youth into their rock cult, the ensemble band blew the roof off into another dimension. Their seven-piece assault has put together a cacophony of air-tight rhythms and wailing banshee screams that carve out new and freakish exo-planet acid-blues territory. Two drum kits; one bassist; three guitars; one wailing ghost harmonica player named Ambrose.
If there’s one sore spot on the set, it’s that they are dropping some of their classical material – adrenal pieces from Mind Fuzz were missing, and incorporated into an extended medley of “Am I In Heaven?” Stu slowly whispered the lyrics of Cellophane into the mic. We were waiting in-crowd on the edge of a knife for the band to kick it into fifth for the classic riff, but alas, that song moment never came. He returned to the resonating finale of ‘Heaven,’ and we all called it a night. They took it to 95%, which, nevertheless, for KGLW is still a tour de force. Honestly, given my concerns about the building safety itself, it was probably the best decision.
The ‘experimental’ new song loosely titled “Vomit Comit” ignited some with the hard chorus and stilted others with the drawn out spoken-word – in the end I’m sure it will kick arse on the band’s upcoming billionth album. (Ten albums in five years is a decent pace, no?)
To complete the line-up, for those too drunk to count to seven: Michael Cavanagh is the drummer with less beard and more hair, Lucas Skinner the blond on bass; Cook Craig stands in the back on rhythm guitar and vocals; Joey Walker sports the red guitar mostly, with short hair, mostly; and Stu Mackenzie steals the show – a shaggy-haired skeletal frontman with a tendency to turn his body upside down or 90 degrees and play the guitar backwards, or with his tongue if he’s suffering iron deficiency from his vegan diet.
Set List (It’s Hazy)
Doom City
All Is Known
Anoxia
Billabong Valley
Sleep Drifter
Nuclear Fusion
Rattlesnake
Alter Me
Altered Beast 2
Alter Me 2
Altered Beast 3
Robot Stop
The River
(Crowd wishes Eric a happy birthday, donates banana)
Gamma Knife
People-Vultures
Lord of Lightning
(New Song, possibly called “Covered in Vomit”)
Am I in Heaven? (Huge Medley: Cellophane/Mind Fuzz)
Review – David Loach
Share this :
