Anittoli18, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
I’ve never joined a cult, but I suspect it’s something like being a fan of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard.
They’re a real band. I’m not making up the name. It was the result of “a certain state of inebriation and a few laughs.” They’re nominally a rock band, though depending on the song or album, they also cover the following territory:
- Psychedelic jams
- Thrash metal
- Microtones and polyrhythms (whatever those are)
- Electronic dance beats
- Boogie blues
- Rap
- Concept albums
- Acoustic folk
- Synth pop
- Surf rock
- Spoken-word narrative with musical accompaniment
They haven’t done a country album yet, though if they release one someday, I won’t be surprised.
If you’re a Gizzard fan, you don’t just dabble—you’re a devoted follower, an evangelist. You add the prefix “Gizz” to as many words as possible, i.e. “Last Gizzvember, I drank the Gizzade and joined the Gizzhive.”
There are six (formerly seven) leaders of this great Australian cult. Please allow me to Gizztroduce them.
Eric Moore (Drums)
Like The Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers before them, Gizz employed two drummers. I usually find this approach redundant, though it was cool to see Eric and his counterpart sit face-to-face at shows and mirror each other’s fills. Eric quit the band in 2020 to focus on managing his record label. (A drummer friend of mine claims he departed because he “couldn’t keep up” with Gizzard’s other drummer, but we’ll avoid speculation.)
Michael Cavanagh (Also Drums)
Gizz’s current percussionist is incredibly versatile. It’s one thing to play varying genres using string and woodwind instruments, many of which can be customized to the music. It’s quite another to find the right grooves using the same drum kit for every song. Michael convincingly shifts from high-speed heavy metal (“Venusian 2“) to jazzy grooves (“Ice V“) to rap beats (“Sadie Sorceress“) to bluesy shuffles (“Fishing for Fishies“). I consider him the keystone of the band.
Lucas Harwood (Bass)
To borrow a concept from American football, bass players are the offensive linemen of music: They don’t get the glory, but they enable it for everyone else. So it is with Lucas. He’s the group member I know least about, though he’s no less talented than the other five guys (see his bass solo on “Mars for the Rich“). Fun fact: He used to be Lucas Skinner, but changed his surname to his wife’s when they married. (I read this fun fact on Reddit, so if it is in fact untrue, I apologize.)
Cook Craig (Guitar and Vocals)
To borrow another sports term, Cook is the ultimate glue guy. He’s perhaps not the flashiest fellow in the band, but he seems to be a beloved teammate. He most often plays rhythm guitar live, which is what I do, so I feel a personal affinity there. Cook also sings in a pseudo guest-star capacity, sort of like Ringo did in the Beatles. Try “The Garden Goblin” from Omnium Gatherum for an example.
Joey Walker (Guitar, Keyboards, and Vocals)
There are three guitarists in Gizzard, and from what I can tell, Joey’s the best of them. His solo on live versions of “Work This Time” is especially magnificent, as are his contributions to every jam on Ice Death. He also plays some excellent keys on a handful of songs, my favorite being “Magenta Mountain.”
Ambrose Kenny-Smith (Vocals, Harmonica, Keyboards, Percussion, Saxophone)
Ambrose’s harmonica is one of the coolest bits of Gizz. It’s featured most prominently on Fishing for Fishies, though it appears plenty on most other releases. He’s also the group’s best singer, in my opinion, with a unique and high-ranging delivery that makes songs like “Let Me Mend the Past” and “Straws in the Wind” live favorites.
I also give him the award for the most interesting adolescence. When introducing the song “Cut Throat Boogie” at Red Rocks in 2022, he said, “This one’s about when I was 16 and I went to a party, and my friend accidentally stabbed me in the neck with a broken bottle. But we’re all good now.”
Stu Mackenzie (Vocals, Guitar, Flute, Clarinet, Keyboards)
Stu is to Gizzard as Townshend is to The Who: He’s the band leader and primary songwriter. While his voice is less distinct than Ambrose’s, it’s more versatile, morphing from breezy croon (“Float Along – Fill Your Lungs“) to thrash metal growl (“Superbug“) with ease. Plus, his lyrics have inspired an overarching story dubbed the “Gizzverse,” which you can learn about on the King Gizzard Subreddit (we’re a cult, so of course we’re on Reddit).
Beyond singing, Stu’s musicianship is virtuosic. His flute would no doubt impress even the likes of Ian Anderson (try “Hot Water“), and his clarinet (try “Sense“) is equally skillful, if less frequent. My brother-in-law Dan describes him as a “musical genius,” and I think he’s right. For example, Stu once uttered the following sentence in an interview with Guitar World regarding Gizzard’s 2017 release Flying Microtonal Banana: “It’s kind of a Dorian mode with a half flat sixth and a half flat second, because that was the way my baglama was fretted.”
I don’t know what any of that means—but I like how the music sounds.
I should also mention Jason Galea, who’s done the album artwork for all the group’s releases. Like the band, Jason works in multiple mediums, from illustrated psychedelic excess (Oddments, Murder of the Universe, Sketches of Brunswick East) to photography (Paper Mâché Dream Balloon, Changes, Float Along – Fill Your Lungs).
So yeah. That’s Gizzard.
Have I mentioned how absurd their output is? Let’s put it this way: As of the writing of this essay, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard has released 23 studio albums in 11 years (including five in 2017 and five more last year), making their average 2.09 albums per year. For comparison, The Rolling Stones have released 30 studio albums in 59 years for an average of one album every other year. If Gizz continues their pace over the same time span as the Stones, they’ll have a discography of 118 studio albums by the year 2071.
Now that you’re familiar with the cult, let me tell you how I joined. We’ll begin with a t-shirt…
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One of my best friends from college owned a navy t-shirt depicting a man with cotton-candy-shaped hair, sunglasses, and Bermuda shorts. The man holds the wheel of a ship in one hand and a beer in the other. The trademarked phrase below reads “Old guys rule.”
While growing up, this was my unspoken attitude toward music. Old people rule. The music of my generation does not.
My favorite musicians were the following, in no particular order: The Who, Jethro Tull, Black Sabbath, The Beatles, The Doors. These were the artists blaring through wired headphones on my iPod Classic. I marked my enjoyment of music by years, starting in 1965 with The Who’s debut album, The Who Sings My Generation, and concluding in 1981 with The Stones’ last great record, Tattoo You. Anything outside that range was a hard sell.
My earliest reckonings of this old-music bias date back to the 2005 action film Sahara, of all things. Based on Clive Cussler’s bestselling adventure novels, the movie stars Matthew McConaughey as Dirk Pitt, some sort of naval-adjacent investigator dude who works out frequently and needs a haircut.
This is one of those movies you hesitate to rewatch, fearing the veneer of nostalgia will wipe clean upon revisitation. Instead of recounting it, I’ll point to a specific scene, in which McConaughey and his goofy sidekick, played by Steve Zahn, speed through the titular desert by strapping wheels to a sailboat and riding a gust of wind across the sand.
My dad is a sailor. I haven’t asked him if this would actually work, though I suspect his answer would be some variation of “Hell no, and let me explain the physics of why not.” At any rate, my most vivid memory of the scene isn’t the visual—it’s the song that was playing.
I asked my mom if she knew said song, and she happily answered it was “Magic Carpet Ride,” one of her favorites. And so, for Christmas that year, a “Best of Steppenwolf” CD appeared in my stocking. The cover depicted the band in full 60s regalia: long hair, beards, mustaches, unbuttoned shirts, even an afro. I listened to this album constantly over the next few years, careful never to bump my CD player lest it skip (young readers, you have no idea what this was like).
Steppenwolf was never my #1, but they opened the door for The Doors. This was another of my mom’s favorites. She introduced me to their greatest hits, then I delved deeper with my dad’s record collection. I delighted in the smokey poetry of Morrison’s vocals, the shimmer of Manzarek’s keys, the buzz of Krieger’s guitar, and the precision of Densmore’s drumming. They quickly became my favorite band.
I had to solidify my devotion the best way I knew how: With a t-shirt. My Doors shirt was an olive-green print with their hollow-letter logo overtop a sunset, a fleet of helicopters swarming across the horizon. I remember buying it at Target, in the section where they sell such frivolous crap. I believe the image came from Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, which featured The Doors’ “The End” in the soundtrack.
Now that I’d explored their discography and equipped myself in the proper attire, it was time to see the Doors live. Well, half of them.
At the Egg in Albany in 2010, original members Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger were joined by Ty Dennis on drums and legendary session man Phil Chen on bass. Milijenko Matijevic played the role of Jim Morrison, and did so quite well.
My mom bought the tickets for my birthday, and my pal Jimmy and I attended. We were the youngest people in the crowd by several decades, and that was how I liked it. Now this is music, I thought to myself, nodding as a drunk, balding man in the front row gyrated to “L.A. Woman.” If I was born 40 years ago, that could’ve been me.
With live music now part of my repertoire, I turned to YouTube for more. That’s when I discovered The Who.
My love for this band was born half of music, half of spectacle. I’ve still never seen a group like them. Take their 1978 live rendition of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” at Shepperton Studios, for instance. Roger Daltrey swings his mic like a grappling hook while Pete Townshend slides across the stage on his knees and, of course, smashes his guitar. Keith Moon gives a lively performance, especially considering it would be his last; he died four months later of an overdose. John Entwistle is the only exception to the mayhem, though the barrage of notes rumbling from his bass remains unparalleled. Once I ordered a Who t-shirt on Amazon, it was settled: They were my new favorite band.
My aforementioned iPod Classic replaced the CD player in high school. With it, I’d watch downloaded YouTube clips of Who concerts during my bus rides. I’m sure the other students looked at me and thought, What a weirdo. While they were texting or sleeping or chatting with friends, I was watching Townshend swing his arm like a windmill.
Yet this was the appeal of my parents’ tunes. You don’t get it, but I do—that’s how my thinking went. Modern music is crap. Old guys rule.
There were exceptions. In my senior year of high school, I surprised myself by becoming quite partial to Lady Gaga. Sophomore year of college, Australian rock band Wolfmother caught my attention. A decade later, I discovered unofficial Led Zeppelin cover band Greta Van Fleet.
None of them lasted. (Except for Gaga—her Super Bowl Halftime Show was lit.) It seemed, for me, that modern music would never rival its ancestors.
Then along came a Gizzard.
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November 2022 was supposed to be about writing, not music. For the third time in my life, I had committed to National Novel Writing Month. Of course, being the serial multitasker that I am, I needed work for my ears as well as my fingers. So, I decided to try King Gizzard.
At this point, I wasn’t yet a convert. I’d tried the album Fishing for Fishies about a year prior, and though I enjoyed its harmonica-based blues, my next listen, Infest the Rat’s Nest, didn’t go so well. Rat’s Nest is about as intense as it sounds. Chugging guitars, throbbing bass, lyrics about cheery subjects like planetary decay and self-immolation. It’s the type of stuff that would’ve concerned my mom had she heard it coming from my room in high school.
Though these records couldn’t be more different, they were both released in the same year. Boogie blues to thrash metal. That’s a transition most bands never make, let alone doing so in a matter of months.
This versatility appeals to longtime fans, but it can be jarring for newcomers. What is this band? I remember thinking, Are they Paul Butterfield or are they Metallica? Of course, the answer was this: both, and more.
A year passed, and while playing badminton one fall afternoon with Dan, my brother-in-law, I received a new recommendation.
“You should listen to Ice Death,” he said. “Great album.”
Dan is a fellow cultist, and so uses the appropriate nickname for Gizzard’s 2022 masterpiece Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava. (I assure you, the font on the cover is quite small.) Here the band eschews blues and metal alike for an hour’s worth of improvised jamming, all based on different Greek modes of music.
I couldn’t tell you what that means, but true to Dan’s word, Ice Death is great. After listening to it for three days straight, I proceeded to a website called “Get into Gizz” (also at Dan’s suggestion), which helps one navigate the band’s expansive discography by offering personalized recommendations. I hopped from Gizzard’s high-energy I’m in Your Mind Fuzz to their acoustic wonder, Paper Mâché Dream Balloon. From there, I floated to their psychedelic jazz album—yes, they have a psychedelic jazz album—called Quarters!
I could go on, but you get the idea. If you need a website to navigate a band’s discography, you must be in a cult.
This music propelled me through November, which came to be known as Gizzvember. I woke every morning at 4am, drowsy but ready to write, switching on the pre-loaded coffee machine, letting the dog out of her crate, sinking into the couch, sinking AirPods into my ears, then cranking the Gizz. We have Alexa in our house, so I commanded her to do the following: “Alexa, from this day henceforth, you shall play nothing but King Gizzard.”
She ignored my directive. She’s out of the cult.
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Has King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard become my favorite band? Maybe. I still need a t-shirt.
But they are a secret language shared by Dan and me, one we’re both fluent in. They combine the aspects of music I so love in other bands: The energy of The Who, the flute of Jethro Tull, the thunderous riffs of Black Sabbath, the acoustic melodies of The Beatles, the double-digit psychedelic odysseys of The Doors. They offer a little of everything without feeling derivative.
Perhaps my greatest connection to the group is their artistic approach. In my writing, I wander from subject to subject. My first book was a supernatural mystery, my second was a short story collection, my third was a comic epic fantasy, and my fourth will be a collection of nonfiction essays.
GetIntoGizz.com describes the band as “genre-confused.” I think that describes me, too.
So, if you’ve made it this far, you’re ready to join the cult. Right this way, friend. Around these parts, every month is Gizzvember. Let me just find you a pair of headphones…
Kyle A. Massa is a comic fantasy author living somewhere in upstate New York with his wife, their daughter, and three wild animals. His published works include three books and several short stories. When he’s not writing, he enjoys reading, running, and drinking coffee.
