“Imagination is a Powerful Thing”: Ranking the King Gizzard Discography
By Judson Harris
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard has had a prolific career, releasing 25 albums spanning multiple genres in just 13 years. From starting off as a garage rock band to now being one of Australia’s most well known bands with an overarching story across their albums known as the Gizzverse, it’s safe to say that they’re truly a once in a lifetime band.
With so many albums, it can be hard to find a good starting place. That’s where I come in. I’ve compiled a tier list of all their albums.
In this article I’ll be breaking down my ranking, reviewing each album in a short paragraph. Now without further ado, let’s get into it.
27. Made In Timeland (2022)
Made In Timeland is put in this spot because I believe it’s their blandest album. It doesn’t offer much other than generic techno music. It has some cool moments, like the rap in “Smoke & Mirrors” and the repeated motif of a ticking clock, but unfortunately the rest of the album drags those moments down with its unoriginal sound.
26. Eyes Like The Sky (2013)
Essentially an audiobook with background music, Eyes Like The Sky is a good listen if you like a good western. Released early on in King Gizzard’s career, the backing music is quite bare bones. The music has your typical western music conventions and the mood of each song changes to fit where the story is at. There’s not much relisten-ability because once you’ve heard the story once, there’s nothing new for the album to offer you.
25. LW (2021)
LW is the third and final album in King Gizzard’s microtonal trilogy. Microtones are notes that are between notes. Think between the frets on a guitar, or between the keys on a piano. They’re most common in eastern music. Even though the musicianship on this album is impeccable, the lyrics are a bit iffy, and sometimes the falsetto vocals get drowned out by the music. While some songs are very well written, others feel like they were running short on ideas.
24. KG (2020)
KG is the second of the microtonal trilogy. In a similar vein to LW, the musicianship is amazing, but the lyrics are just good at best. Only in KG’s case, slightly better than LW. Songs like “Minimum Brain Size” and “Oddlife” offer great commentary on real world issues, while others like “Automation” tell compelling stories that contribute to the overarching story of the Gizzverse.
23. Teenage Gizzard (2020)
This album is a compilation of King Gizzard’s first ever releases from the 2010’s. It works as a great precursor to Willoughby’s Beach. It establishes a clear starting point for King Gizzard as a band. The mixing is a bit sloppy and the vocals are sometimes muffled as if the microphone was covered in a bath towel, but you can’t deny the energy that each song throws at you.
22. Willoughby’s Beach (2011)
Short, sweet and to the point, Willoughby’s Beach takes what Teenage Gizzard set the foundation for and turns it up to 11. It still faces the same problems of poor mixing, muffled vocals, and sometimes ear-piercing guitar sounds, and short length. Despite this, it starts off super high energy and maintains that energy throughout the entire album.
21. 12 Bar Bruise (2012)
12 Bar Bruise is a step up from Willoughbyś Beach in every regard. With each song now double the length of those in Willoughby’s Beach, there’s more room for the band to just jam out and explore more ideas. The energy is even higher than their previous two albums. The one glaring issue it faces is that the guitars are really loud and scratchy which could hurt your ears.
20. Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms, and Lava (2022)
This is the most creative album that the band released in 2022. With each song being in a different musical mode, it offers opportunity after opportunity to explore new ideas and just jam out. The different modes contribute to the overall mood of the song greatly, and the deviation from the typical major and minor scales make for interesting melodies.
19. Float Along - Fill Your Lungs (2013)
This album was where King Gizzard decided to break away from their typical garage rock sound and begin experimenting. Float Along - Fill Your Lungs was their attempt at psychedelic rock. While still sounding like their earlier albums in some aspects, it works great for their first time trying something new. What brings it down is that despite it being completely new to them, it’s just a psychedelic rock album and not much else. It lacks the charm that makes other albums special.
18. Laminated Denim (2022)
Following in Made in Timeland’s footsteps by only having two songs, Laminated Denim does away with its predecessor’s techno sound and goes with a more laid back sound. Each song’s length contributes to its benefit by giving the band time to jam out and create some genuinely fun moments. The contrasting vibes of each song create this sort of two sides of the same coin thing that’s really cool to listen to.
17. Omnium Gatherum (2022)
Being their first album back in the studio together since 2019, Omnium Gatherum made it clear that the guys hadn’t lost their touch in their time apart. While being incredibly disjointed with songs of many genres including rap and metal, Omnium Gatherum is a good exploration of all the genres that King Gizzard has covered in their career. Some songs land while others don’t, but overall it’s a great anthology of all the genres King Gizzard is capable of.
16. Butterfly 3000 (2021)
Butterfly 3000 is the band’s first delve into electronic music. With offbeat synth loops paired with acoustic instruments, the sound created in this album is nothing short of unique. The way some songs flow together makes a captivating mood. The pairing of “Dreams” and “Blue Morpho” is a standout moment, telling a story of falling asleep and being reborn in a dream. Bringing an upbeat vibe to an otherwise hard year for the world, Butterfly 3000 is one of their most fun albums.
15. Fishing for Fishies (2019)
After a short hiatus in 2018, the band came back with Fishing for Fishies. Filled to the brim with environmental messages, it does get a little preachy at times. Despite this, the messages carried are very genuine. Problems like plastic pollution in “Plastic Boogie” and the dangers of getting out of touch in “The Cruel Millennial” are made known as issues the band cares deeply about. Along with these songs, the band includes some of their typical songs that further the Gizzverse.
14. Gumboot Soup (2017)
Being the last of the five albums released in 2017, Gumboot Soup is an album of songs that didn’t make the cut for prior albums or didn’t have a place anywhere. It’s pretty easy to figure out where some songs go. What’s interesting is that one of the songs, “Muddy Water,” is kind of an expansion of a song from Teenage Gizzard, “Summer.” It’s fun to pick out references in each song and fit them into the stories that their other albums tell.
13. Changes (2022)
Changes as an album is full of fun concepts. First, the opener “Change” is a fifteen minute long jam full of different chord progressions. Each song after is built out of a specific chord progression from “Change.” Moreover, the first letter of each song title put together spells out “Changes.” Each song has a certain theme which makes them unique to one another. Taking on a more experimental jazz-ish sound, the entire album is fun to dance and sing along to.
12. Sketches of Brunswick East (2017)
This album is their first and, as of right now, only collaboration. Made with Mild High Club, Sketches of Brunswick East is one of their most relaxed albums. Each song works together to paint a picture of the fictional Brunswick East. This album incorporates a lot of King Gizzard’s touches, such as microtones and odd time signatures.
11. Oddments (2014)
As the name suggests, Oddments is an outtake album made up of songs that didn’t make the cut for previous albums. Despite this, each of the songs helps create a fun and purposefully disjointed mood that provides a listening experience that their previous albums couldn’t. The closer, “Oddments,” wraps things up nicely by fully capturing the mood of the album in a short twenty-six second song.
10. Quarters! (2015)
Quarters! is one of the more unique concept albums that King Gizzard has released. The album only has four songs, all of which being the exact same length of ten minutes and ten seconds long. That means that each song is exactly one quarter of the album. The laid back nature of the album is different from any other album of theirs. That nature makes it incredibly easy to get lost in the music.
9. Murder of the Universe (2017)
This album is the first one to explicitly tell a story. This album is actually split into three stories: The Altered Beast, The Lord of Lightning vs. The Balrog, and Han-Tyumi & the Murder of the Universe. The narration in the first two stories is really interesting, but the narrator’s voice does get in the way of the music sometimes. In the third story, the change to a robotic voice for the narration creates an intriguing yet uncomfortable dystopian mood that carries through until the end of the album. Each story has ties to the overarching lore of the Gizzverse, and they all are creative and fun to listen to.
8. I’m In Your Mind Fuzz
I’m In Your Mind Fuzz is a fun album to listen to. The first four songs, which are commonly called the Mind Fuzz Suite, all flow into one another and create a cool twelve minute song split into four parts. The rest of the album is considerably lower in energy, but despite this they all are good listens. Songs like “Her and I (Slow Jam 2)” and “Hot Water” are great examples of them being able to keep their music fun while still keeping the energy low.
7. Paper Mâché Dream Balloon (2015)
Being their only fully acoustic album, Paper Mâché Dream Balloon provides a look into what the band is capable of when stripped back to its base level. Even without all the loud guitars and amps and stuff like that, the energy never dwindles and always stays constant. With this album initially being made to hold their fans over until a later release, it still keeps the charm of King Gizzard without the usual sound that they’re known for.
6. Infest the Rats’ Nest (2019)
This album was a surprise for everyone. Being a metal album, naturally it’s really high energy and crazy. Filled with metaphors and sci-fi stories, Infest the Rats’ Nest offers commentary on things like climate change and the future of the human race. Despite its harsh aggressive sound, the commentary it provides is really well thought out. The narrative told in the album is about a group of astronauts who attempt to colonize Venus, and one of the later songs uses the term “self-immolate” as a metaphor for the destruction of the human race. Overall it’s a well put together album relative to what the band has made, and it’s a solid metal album in general as well.
Now we’re getting into the good stuff: the top five. From this point on, the reviews are going to be getting longer. These are the best of the best in my opinion. The cream of the crop. Here are the five quintessential King Gizzard albums.
5. Flying Microtonal Banana (2017)
Flying Microtonal Banana is an excellent example of taking traditional Eastern music conventions and incorporating them into Western music flawlessly. Along with using keyboards and guitars specifically modified to play in 24 tones rather than the standard 12, King Gizzard uses traditional Eastern instruments such as the zurna. Nothing feels out of place in this album. The microtones are used sparingly, only having certain scale degrees as microtones. The other instruments give the album a unique vibe, letting it stand out from the rest of their music. It has a distinct Eastern vibe that the other two microtonal albums don’t have, and I love it. The fact that some songs are longer than five minutes means that the band has lots of time to explore ideas and mess around with a lot of the ideas that are laid in front of them. The start of the album is perfect because of its simplicity and efficiency in showing you just what you’re getting into, starting with an ascending scale where the second and seventh notes are microtones. A scale, for those who don’t know, is just the notes in your standard octave. Think C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. The underlined letters are microtones, being half flat.
4. The Silver Cord (2023)
Made as a pairing to Petrodragonic Apocalypse, this album is a polar opposite. The album’s sound is completely opposite to that of the prior album, being synthwave instead of prog metal. The band explores this genre to its fullest potential, using an electric drum machine and ditching their guitars entirely in favor of synthesizers. The album has major themes of death and rebirth and plays heavily into that with the lyrics of each song. But that’s just the standard edition. In the extended mix, each song is lengthened to over ten minutes, which in some cases is almost five times the length of the original song (The extended mix of “Theia” reaches twenty minutes). These extended mixes give the band more time to play around with their instruments and they compose moments that in all honesty are nothing short of beautiful. Creating an atmosphere that is at times serene and oppressing at other times, King Gizzard has proven with this album that they can truly master any genre.
3. Polygondwanaland (2017)
This album’s main gimmick is messing around with polyrhythms. Polyrhythm is where two melodies or beats are played in different rhythms on top of each other. This album is split into three stories, much like Murder of the Universe, but before getting into them the album opens with an eleven minute track, “Crumbling Castle,” that sets the bar high for the rest of the album. Every song experiments with different rhythms and piles them on top of each other in new ways to make some great songs. As the album progresses, each song has a more complicated composition. Despite being so complex, none of the songs are hard to digest. It’s fun to listen more closely and pick out the little details, but on the surface level they still maintain just the perfect amount of cohesion to make each song stand well on its own
2. Petrodragonic Apocalypse (2023)
Regardless of whether you’re a King Gizzard fan or just a fan of metal, Petrodragonic Apocalypse is a killer album. It tells a huge story that fits in nicely with the lore of the Gizzverse. It has things that the band has never done before, such as throat singing in the opener, “Motor Spirit.” As for the story, it actually offers a lot in terms of commentary. There’s lots of commentary on humanity’s over reliance on fossil fuels. It creates and maintains a fantastical mood when the story shifts to the cultists who try to use magic to get rid of the storm that was brought about by the manmade deity Motor Spirit. Then the story takes a darker turn when the spell gets messed up and the cult’s pet gila monster gets turned into a massive dragon. From a musical perspective, Petrodragonic Apocalypse is one of King Gizzard’s most well made albums, and is a huge step up from Infest the Rats’ Nest. Riffs are well put together and aren’t too overly technical or flashy, but they’re still complicated enough to show off some skill. The drums add so much to the music, and it’s clear that the drummer Michael Cavanagh has improved exponentially during his time with the band. Every band member has something to contribute to this album and it’s evident that they put a lot of love and thought into making this album the best it could possibly be.
1. Nonagon Infinity (2016)
Picture this: you’re listening to the closing moments of this album, and just when you get to the end you expect silence, only to be right back at the beginning of the album. That’s right, Nonagon Infinity is an infinitely looping album. Consisting of nine songs (hence the name, “Nonagon,” which is a nine-sided shape) that flow seamlessly into each other, King Gizzard has opened the door to endless musical possibilities. No one song takes too much time, only staying as long as it needs to. Even the longer songs don’t feel like they overstay their welcome. The first four songs on the album, “Robot Stop” through “People Vultures,” are an onslaught of high energy riffs and drumming that you just can’t help but headbang along to. Once these are over, the energy slows down a little bit with “Mr. Beat,” then it picks right back up with “Evil Death Roll” and continues all the way to the end and into the beginning of the album. One of many highlights is the great use of foreshadowing. Very frequently a song will be playing and then all of a sudden a riff from the next song will show up, teasing you with what’s to come. This coupled with the fact that the album itself has a chorus, that being “Nonagon Infinity opens the door,” makes Nonagon Infinity feel a lot like a forty-one minute song split into nine parts. Another thing done well is the constant changing of rhythm. This happens all the time in every song. Normally this might make it feel really disjointed and all over the place, but King Gizzard shows off their knowledge of songwriting and is able to make it compelling rather than distracting. Bits from previous albums also show up in random places, like a melody from the song “Hot Water” from I’m In Your Mind Fuzz appearing in the song “Robot Stop.” Nonagon Infinity truly set the precedent for how King Gizzard got so experimental. If you’re ever wanting to get into King Gizzard, this is an excellent starting point.
Now with all that being said, my ranking isn’t the be-all end-all, so feel free to give them a listen yourself and make your own ranking! Below are the links to their profile on six music streaming services for you to experience them for yourself.
Links to their music:
