King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard kicked off their tour at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on Tuesday, August 13th. Going into the show, it was hard to know what to expect. Early in their career, their music was defined by easy to listen to, sun drenched melodies. As their career progressed, they dove further and further into psychedelia. And they dove DEEP. In 2017 alone they released 5 albums. Now, coming up on their 15th album, the Lizard Wizards are taking a sharp left turn into metal.
The openers for the night foreshadowed this turn a little bit. Both ORB and Stonefield brought a heaviness that wasn’t found a lot of King Gizzard’s early work. The sets were well received, but I don’t think a lot of the audience was ready for what was next. After a quick 15 minute turnover, KG&TLW opened with “Self-Immolate”, a single off their new album. This is a no-bullshit metal track that definitely took some fans off guard. It’s so radically different than the rest of the material that you can sympathize with them. After a little getting used to, though, most seemed to catch on and accept this new sound. Through the next 22 tracks, King Gizzard weaved between the new tracks and their old material seamlessly. The light show was also very impressive. Their backdrop perfectly matched their mind bending tracks and the stage banter was predictably weird and hilarious.
After roughly 2 hours, front man Stu Mackenzie thanked the crowd about 15 times and the Lizards filed off without an encore. We didn’t need one; they had done more than enough.
