With the funkiest of sounds and a tenacity for grooving, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard has returned for the third time this year with their new release, Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, and Lava. The six-piece rock band, originally a college project, has been bending minds and genres alike for nearly a decade. This new album is no exception, their experimental melodies wrapping their way around listeners arms and parading us around like little groove puppets. 

 

Created mostly over the course of a week of long improvisational jam sessions, each song on the album is written in one of the seven musical greek modes. Beginning with “Mycelium,” written in Ionian (major) mode, the band establishes a bouncy, sunny jazz with meandering vocals and loose lyricism. As the album continues, we stumble upon “Magma,” and dive into molten worlds of worship soundtracked by wandering psychedelic guitar solos. They finish up with “Gliese 710,” written in Iocrian mode, the rarest of the Greek modes. The song rounds up the album with an off-putting, ominous feel. 

 

With each track lasting about nine or ten minutes, King Gizzard succeeded, for the most part, in keeping the sound engaging. Though some portions of the album felt they overstayed their welcome just a tad too long, the brilliance of experimental solos and the building of bizarre, obscure imagery through lyrics keeps the listener on their toes. The band is quite unique in the sense of creating for the sake of desire and fun, rather than sales or marketability, and this album is a true reflection of this sentiment.