Music review: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Usher Hall, Edinburgh - 'outrageously, thrillingly perfect'
Being caught up in this deluge of noise, rhythm and occasional bursts of melody was an unforgettable experience, writes David Pollock
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Usher Hall, Edinburgh *****
No band with a name like King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard deserves to be as outrageously, thrillingly perfect as the six-piece Melbourne rock group are in the live arena. If you watched their Usher Hall show from the balcony with a pair of extremely sturdy ear defenders on, you’d give it four stars on the strength of the raw excitement generated by the few hundred people in the churning moshpit alone.
This crowd looked predominantly under-30, all enjoying the kind of rowdy and uninhibited physical euphoria which brought to mind gigs from the months after Covid lockdown. Jumping, crowd-surfing in waves, running in their dozens in a circular whirlpool, at one point sitting down in an en masse rowing motion; few audiences have been better value in their own right.
It wouldn’t have happened without the six men onstage inciting it all, of course. King Gizzard are a synthesis of thrash metal, prog rock, 12-bar blues and the kind of sludgy, relentless 1970s rock created by Black Sabbath and Motorhead, and onstage they’re turned up to riotous volume. Guitarist and lead vocalist Stu Mackenzie wore a kilt to play up his heritage. “He won’t stop talking about it,” noted fellow guitarist Joey Walker.
There are three lead players in the band, plus keyboards and a thunderous two-piece rhythm section, playing at a wall of sound intensity which echoed the physical impact of techno. They sprinted between relentless, melodic riffing on Cellophane, the hurtling garage of I’m In Your Mind Fuzz, thrash rock mysticism on Flamethrower, old-school raw power on Gaia and Motor Spirit, almost mellow psych-blues on The Bitter Boogie, and perfect, piercingly tuneful punk rock on the closing Rattlesnake.
These songs bore no message beyond a deluge of noise and rhythm and occasional bursts of melody slipping through the cracks, and an almost religious devotion to those things as ends in themselves. Being caught in the wave was an unforgettable experience.