Album review by Shayla Clarke
Releasing their 25th album last week – also their second album for the year – was the much-loved Australian band King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, who introduced The Silver Cord into the world.
Well known for traversing through different genres of music, it’s a difficult task to assign them to one particular style. This milestone album takes us down a whole new avenue for the band, as the group have experimented with electronic music resulting in the creation of a heavily synthesised track list.
The album essentially embodies two pieces of work – the first half showcasing 7 new three-minute tracks, and the second half of the album belonging to extensions of those 7 tracks – these being long ranged mixes lasting between 10 to 20 minutes (yes – 20 minutes!).
The band highlighted that this sound has all been based around the purchase of ‘The Simmons’ drum set which is an iconic feature of 1980’s futurism, which was impulsively purchased by Gizz’s very own Michael “Cavs” Cavanagh.
Kicking off the album is ‘Theia’ with the opening lyrics also being the album name, “The Silver Cord”. A very spiritual song lyrically and with a futuristic sound, Stu Mackenzie’s strong vocals bring it all together. The electronic genre is quite out of my comfort zone, but I thoroughly enjoyed the 20-minute extended mix of this also. This would have to be my favourite song off the record.
Next up is ‘The Silver Cord’. This starts quite slowly and with very altered vocals, which can be quite hard to distinguish what the lyrics actually are. I can only describe this song as quite supernatural and other-worldly.
‘Set’ is a song you can envision them playing live – quite repetitive lyrics before turning into a rap which would hype up any crowd. There is a strong beat behind this one that I can imagine getting stuck in my head for days.
‘Chang’e’ is the ‘woman of the moon’ in Chinese mythology, so you can only imagine the lyrics that go along to it. Another slower paced song initially before it picks up in tempo right near the end.
My other favourite from this album is ‘Gilgamesh’. This is another one you can picture them performing at a festival and seeing the crowd absolutely immersing themselves into. It has powerful beats, psychedelic tones and features another rap.
The last two tracks on the first part of this album are ‘Swan Song’ and ‘Extension’ which both continue to go down the mystical path. Most of the songs on this album are about mythology, or anything that doesn’t really exist on this planet.
The prolific music producers have put out 25 albums in just 10 years, and a shakeup of their style has been warmly welcomed. For the hardcore King Gizz fans, this almost two-hour long album is a dream come true and the extended mixes will be appreciated by many.
This new album follows the success of album number 24, ‘PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation’, which was released in June of this year. King Gizz are up for a few prizes at the ARIA Awards for this album which will take place in a couple of weeks’ time, where they have been nominated for Best Group, Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Album, and Best Video.
