Paul Hudson from United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I had to do it eventually.

A Foreward

To prepare for this meaningless exercise, I listened to a lot of Gizzard. That’s pretty much the only prerequisite.

25. Murder of the Universe

All you need to know about this album is that it’s got a track called “Vomit Coffin.” It’s meant to gross you out, as described by Gizzard frontman Stu Mackenzie on the KGLW website:

“…It’s the stupidest and ugliest thing we’ve ever done. I knew this record would be liked by some and loathed by many.”

I can’t bring myself to loathe any of their music, but I still have to rank it last. The Altered Beast suite and “The Lord of Lightning” are cool. The rest is so-so.

24. 12 Bar Bruise

A little gamey. Hints of Willoughby’s Beach, Eyes Like the Sky, and I’m in Your Mind Fuzz scattered throughout. “Elbow” sounds like The Ramones on more cocaine than usual.

23. The Silver Cord

An interesting experiment in electronic music, but it worked better for me on Butterfly 3000 (we’ll get to that one soon).

22. Made in Timeland

I like this album more than most, as evidenced by writer Mike Bringman’s album review for Still Listening Magazine, in which he called it “a silly release.” Not untrue, but I still dig this silly release, especially when Amby raps at the end.

21. Eyes Like the Sky

As spoken-word fake American Western movie soundtracks go, this one starts out strong. “Eyes Like the Sky,” “Year of Our Lord,” “The Raid,” “Drum Run”…these are all songs you could imagine hearing in a John Wayne movie. My only gripe is that the story sort of ends, rather than actually concluding.

20. Float Along – Fill Your Lungs

It’s bookended by two psychedelic masterpieces, but the tracks in between are middling at best, except for “Let Me Mend the Past,” which would’ve been another masterpiece, if not for the weird megaphone effect on Amby’s vocals. It plays far, far better live.

19. L.W.

No, that doesn’t stand for “Little Women.” It’s a little better than I remember it being, but it’s simply not as good as its sister album, K.G. (and no, that doesn’t stand for Kevin Garnett). The link with K.G. might always make it seem worse than it is.

18. Laminated Denim

Took me a few listens to comprehend this one, but it’s a jamming delight. “Hypertension” is a great track, which is probably why they play it live so often.

17. Sketches of Brunswick East

A lot of hipster Gizzard fans rank this album among their best, but I’m baffled by that take. Don’t get me wrong—I enjoy this one. It’s their jazziest to date, and Stu’s flute playing here is second only to Paper Mâché Dream Balloon.

Still, I can’t place Sketches any higher than the albums to come, since it’s ultimately more artsy than hooky.

16. Flying Microtonal Banana

It may be number 16 on this list, but Banana might be Gizzard’s number one best-named album ever. The band’s first foray into microtonal tuning is packed with catchy songs, with standouts being “Rattlesnake,” “Anoxia,” and “Nuclear Fusion.” Very tight, very fun, and very high in potassium.

15. Gumboot Soup

This album features some of my favorite cover art. Musically, it’s kind of like a .500 football season: Half wins and half losses. “Greenhouse Heat Death” and “The Last Oasis” feel like filler, but “Muddy Water,” “Down the Sink,” “All is Known,” and “The Wheel” are big-time winners. Also, “The Great Chain of Being” might be the headbangiest entry in their catalog (I believe this is the definitive version).

14. K.G.

Among their microtonal albums, this is probably the strongest. Its songs are interesting at worst and outstanding at best, with many of them being live staples. I’m convinced that “The Hungry Wolf of Fate” is their most underrated song. Here’s petitioning them to play it live when I see them in August.

13. Changes

Tracks two through seven range from decent to good. “Hate Dancin'”? Decent. “Astroturf”? Good. “Gondii”? As my brother-in-law Dan would say, it sounds like Mario Kart. But track number one?

Track one is “Change.” “Change” is so great that it drags the entire record up to the 12 spot. It’s catchy, intricate, dynamic, and well-structured, with moments of brilliance from all six band members. Highly recommend watching the performance sequence from John Angus Stewart’s Sleeping Monster. It’s sick.

Also, this album cover proves my ultimate theory of band photography: For the image to look coolest, one person must always be looking away.

12. Oddments

Stu describes this one as “a rogue pube.” Just thought you should know that.

Besides being a rogue pube, Oddments is also quite odd, in that it’s an amalgam of leftover songs from various other sessions. This creates a delightful mess, which gets most delightful on the dramatic “Work This Time” and the bluesy “It’s Got Old.” I’m trying to learn the latter on harmonica (with middling results).

11. Butterfly 300

Unlike The Silver Cord, this electronic album isn’t entirely electronic. There’s lots of gorgeous acoustic guitar throughout, and it adds to the record’s general sense of euphoria (Stu’s daughter was born while they were recording). All 10 songs are great, but “Shanghai” is the crowning masterpiece.

10. Polygondwanaland

Most Gizzard fans lionize this album. The first four times I listened to it, I didn’t.

The fifth, though. The fifth listen is when all those unusual time signatures and precise guitar licks finally clicked into place. Polygondwanaland is not an album so much as a portal to another world, a world where rhythms fall on unexpected beats. It’s a neat place. You should visit.

9. Fishing for Fishies

I admit to an irrational fondness for this album. I’ve probably got it higher than the average Gizzhead, and I would’ve ranked it even higher if I could justify it. It’s their most accessible recording, one you could flip on at a party and not get yelled at (I’ve tried—it works). It’s also the best exhibition of Ambrose Kenny-Smith’s harmonica playing, which drives pretty much every track. Love it.

8. Quarters!

This is another I might have too high, so allow me to make the case in four points:

  1. “The River” is the band’s most enduring live classic. I mean, hundreds of people will sit on dirty concert venue floors and pretend they’re rowing when this song comes on.
  2. The structure is unique. What other album features four songs that are each exactly 10 minutes and 10 seconds, I ask you?
  3. The ambiance is delightfully retro, making the whole product sound like something recorded in 1968, not 2015.
  4. Aside from “The River,” the other three quarters are better than you might remember. “Infinite Rise” is hypnotic, “God is in the Rhythm” is beautiful, and “Lonely Steel Sheet Flyer” sometimes makes me wonder if it’s actually the best song on the album.

Hope I’ve convinced you.

7. Nonagon Infinity

This album is kinda repetitive. Which is the entire point.

It’s basically one 40-minute song you could play on loop, circularly, infinitely, nonagonly. It’s also the band at their most energetic, with omnipresent crash cymbals, squealing guitars, and cries of “Woo!” aplenty. The energy only lets up on “Mr. Beat,” and even then, that’s one of the catchiest songs on the list.

If you like this album’s opening track, you’re going to love the rest. If you don’t, you must not be a fan of quality.

6. PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation

Had to include the full title here because I think it’s outstanding and hilarious (and I’ve given up on limiting my word count). I wrote a full review of this album when it dropped, complete with a digitally created image of the album cover on a throw pillow. If I may, I’d like to quote from that review below:

“Billed as a sequel to their 2019 thrash metal classic Infest the Rat’s Nest, PetroDragonic Apocalypse shares an unexpected lineage with a different Gizzard record: 2022’s Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava. Ice Death is known for its long orchestrations, and we see them here with Petro, too; only ‘Gila Monster’ runs shorter than five minutes. The rest are lengthier explorations, with ‘Motor Spirit,’ ‘Dragon,’ and ‘Flamethrower’ all approaching double-digits.”

For my full thoughts, I suggest reading the review. For my abridged thoughts, I’ll share them now: This album slaps.

5. I’m In Your Mind Fuzz

Mind Fuzz is their fifth album, but it feels like their first. As the seminal text for what Gizzard became, it’s got all their signature features: Lengthy compositions, fuzzy guitars, wailing harmonica, a dash of flute, and opaque lyrics. It’s an invigorating listen, front to back.

4. Paper Mâché Dream Balloon

I think this album, perhaps more than any others so far, shows the band’s musical range. It’s all acoustic instruments, specifically clarinet, violin, sitar, and, of course, flute. It’s not like they switched personnel between this release and Mind Fuzz or Nonagon—they’re just that versatile.

But it’s not all blissful bucolic wonder. The instrumental textures belie the morbidity of the lyrics, which are pretty much all related to death. This contrast makes a great album somehow even greater.

3. Infest the Rat’s Nest

For a band with such an expansive discography, there are certain turning points you’ll hear in the music. Mind Fuzz was one. Microtonal Banana was another. Infest the Rat’s Nest might be the most significant.

Upon release, this was their heaviest record to date. It might still be. Of course, it didn’t come from nowhere; Nonagon gets pretty crunchy on “Road Train,” and “The Great Chain of Being” from Gumboot previews the vocal style Stu would employ two years later. There’s a reason they play songs from this album at pretty much every show.

Do yourself a favor. Queue this one up. Plug in some earbuds. And, to quote Bob Dylan, play it fucking loud.

2. Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava

The lack of an Oxford comma offends me, but I’ll let it slide for this album, because it’s a bona fide mega classic.

Coming just three years after their last reinvention, this is yet another one. This is when Gizzard officially became a jam band.

They’d done longer orchestrations before, true. But this time, they’re all long; “Lava” is the shortest at 6:41. Furthermore, the recording process was entirely improvisational. As Stu described in a 2022 interview with Stereogum, “…all we went in with was a tempo, a key signature, and a title. There was nothing else—no riffs, no melodies, nothing like that. We just went in there and picked up instruments and said, ‘Let’s go.’”

“Let’s go” is my exact thought whenever I queue this one up. You’ll get lost in the intricate layers of sound here. The interplay between the three guitars is most obvious, but there’s so much more bubbling underneath. Listen to the flute melodies, the keyboard licks, the astounding drum beats, and you’ll realize that each listen reveals something new.

This is an album you could listen to for the rest of your life and never hear the end of. I plan to do just that.

1. Omnium Gatherum

It’s too long. It’s messy. It’s jumbled. It’s random.

Omnium Gatherum might be all of those things. But it’s also King Gizzard’s greatest achievement.

The band is predicated on shapeshifting, after all. But if it’s changing every few months, how can you ever capture a single satisfactory snapshot? You do it by releasing a double LP with 16 tracks, each exploring a different musical genre or style.

An 18-minute jam, a synth-pop epic, two heavy-metal bangers, a social critique, a Syd Barrett-esque tune, a Santana-esque tune, even a pair of rap songs…you’ll find them all on Omnium Gatherum, plus so much more.

There’s no single record that defines a band as versatile as King Gizzard, but this one comes pretty damn close. That’s why I believe it’s their best.

Thanks For Sticking Around

If you made it this far, you’re either a real diehard or one of my parents. Hope you enjoyed it. Long live the Gizz.

Kyle A. Massa is a comedy author of some sort living somewhere in upstate New York with his wife, their daughter, and three wild animals. His published works include five books, along with several short stories, essays, and poems. When he’s not writing, he enjoys reading, running, and drinking cheap coffee.