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Oct 04, 2022 By Mark Redfern Photography by Jason Galea

Melbourne-based psych-rock group King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are releasing Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava, the first of three new albums, this Friday and now they have shared a new song from it, the nine-minute “Iron Lung.” Listen below, followed by the band’s upcoming tour dates.

“‘Iron Lung’ (along with the other songs off this record) is the ultimate collab,” says frontman Stu Mackenzie in a press release. “We wrote the lyrics as a group and created the music out of improvisation. Spontaneous creation. The best kind. And that’s why I’m proud of it. Hope you dig.”

Previously they shared the 10-minute long “Ice V,” the first single from Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava (it was one of our Songs of the Week). They are releasing two more albums this month. Laminated Denim follows on October 12 and then Changes comes out October 28. All are being released via the band’s own KGLW label.

For Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava, the band didn’t write any songs prior to entering the studio.

“All we had prepared as we walked into the studio were these seven song titles,” says Mackenzie. “I have a list on my phone of hundreds of possible song titles. I’ll never use most of them, but they’re words and phrases I feel could be digested into King Gizzard-world.”

Mackenzie picked out seven titles from that list, ones that he felt “had a vibe.” A press release says he “then attached a beats-per-minute value to each one. Each song would also follow one of the seven modes of the major scale: Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian.”

The band then recorded over the course of seven days, producing four-to-five hours of jams. “Naturally, each day’s jams had a different flavor, because each day was in a different scale and a different BPM,” Mackenzie says. “We’d walk into the studio, set everything up, get a rough tempo going and just jam. No preconceived ideas at all, no concepts, no songs. We’d jam for maybe 45 minutes, and then all swap instruments and start again.”

At the end of each day Mackenzie would take those jams and assemble them into songs, from which the band would oversdub additional instrumentation and then write lyrics as a group. “We had an editable Google Sheet that we were all working on,” says Mackenzie. “Most of the guys in the band wrote a lot of the lyrics, and it was my job to arrange it all and piece it together.”

Laminated Denim, meanwhile, simply features two 15-minute long tracks. “Laminated Denim is an anagram of Made In Timeland,” says Mackenzie, referencing a vinyl-only album they released earlier this year.

Changes is actually an album King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have been working on for several years, first intending to release it in 2017, a year in which the band released five albums. “We really have been tinkering with it since then,” Mackenzie says.

“Every song is built around this one chord progression—every track is like a variation on a theme,” Mackenzie continues. “But I don’t know if we had the musical vocabulary yet to complete the idea at that time. We recorded some of it then, including the version of ‘Exploding Suns’ that’s on the finished album. But when the sessions were over, it just never felt done. It was like this idea that was in our heads, but we just couldn’t reach. We just didn’t know yet how to do what we wanted to do.”

The frontman adds: “It’s not necessarily our most complex record, but every little piece and each sound you hear has been thought about a lot.”

The first letter of each song title on Changes spells out the album’s title.

The band’s most recent album, Omnium Gatherum, came out back in April 2022 via KGLW. The one before that, Butterfly 3000, came out in June 2021 via KGLW.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Tour Dates:

Tue. Oct. 4 - Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater * SOLD OUT
Wed. Oct. 5 - Vancouver, BC @ PNE Forum *
Thu. Oct. 6 - Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre * SOLD OUT
Mon. Oct. 10 - Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre * SOLD OUT
Tue. Oct. 11 - Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre * SOLD OUT
Fri. Oct. 14 - St Paul, MN @ The Palace Theatre * SOLD OUT
Sat. Oct. 15 - Chicago, IL @ RADIUS * SOLD OUT
Sun. Oct. 16 - Detroit, MI @ Masonic Temple *
Tue. Oct. 18 - Toronto, ON @ History * SOLD OUT
Wed. Oct. 19 - Montreal, QC @ L’Olympia * SOLD OUT
Fri. Oct. 21 - Forest Hills, NY @ Forest Hills Stadium %
Sat. Oct. 22 - Philadelphia, PA @ Franklin Music Hall * SOLD OUT
Sun. Oct. 23 - Washington, DC @ The Anthem * SOLD OUT
Mon. Oct. 24 - Asheville, NC @ Rabbit Rabbit * SOLD OUT
Wed. Oct. 26 - Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern * SOLD OUT
Thu. Oct. 27 - New Orleans, LA @ Orpheum Theater *
Fri. Oct. 28 - Austin, TX @ Levitation - Stubb’s *
Sat. Oct. 29 - Austin, TX @ Levitation - Stubb’s $
Mon. Oct. 31 - Oklahoma City, OK @ The Criterion #
Wed. Nov. 2nd - Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre #
Thu. Dec. 29 - Tauranga, NZ @ Wharepai Domain
Sat. Dec. 31 - Wanaka, NZ @ Rhythm & Alps
Wed. Jan. 4 - Auckland, NZ @ The Matakana Country Park
Thu. Apr. 6 - Byron Bay, AUS @ Byron Bay Bluesfest
Fri. Apr. 7 - Byron Bay, AUS @ Byron Bay Bluesfest
Sat. Apr. 8 - Byron Bay, AUS @ Byron Bay Bluesfest
Sun. Apr. 9 - Byron Bay, AUS @ Byron Bay Bluesfest
Mon. Apr. 10 - Byron Bay, AUS @ Byron Bay Bluesfest

* w/ Leah Senior
% w/ black midi, Leah Senior
​$ ​w/ Tropical Fuck Storm, The Murlocs
# w/ The Murlocs, Leah Senior

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