King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard released their 28th album, Alien Metal, as a surprise at midnight on August 14, SPIN, JamBase and Stereogum all reported. The Melbourne band's Joey Walker says the record "goes really hard, but it also goes to really interesting places," describing individual tracks across the eight-song set as running from early Prodigy-style hardcore jungle on "Level 5" to techno on "Sapience" and toward house on "Superheavy, Supercritical," with "Kill For The Steel" landing somewhere in weird IDM territory with Miami bass underneath.
The album was created almost entirely on the band's sprawling modular synthesizer rig, nicknamed Nathan, with every finished track growing out of a single hour-long improvisation in the key of F sharp. Frontman Stu Mackenzie says the band scrapped more material than ever before making it, describing "entire albums, entire universes that were formulated, created, recorded, deleted and started again," and calls working on the Eurorack synthesizer an experience that "completely rewired my brain," adding that he set out to "forget everything I know about music and relearn it all from scratch."
The album follows the band's 2023 electronic album The Silver Cord and 2025's orchestral Phantom Island, continuing a run of genre experiments that began in earnest on 2021's Butterfly 3000 and carried through a 2025 European tour of "rave shows" built around Nathan. It was preceded by three singles: "Level 5," the title track and "Kill For The Steel."
It arrived alongside the band's second annual Field of Vision festival in Buena Vista, Colorado, livestreamed in full and for free on YouTube across 45 hours over the weekend. The lineup included a solo Mackenzie set plus performances from Blood Incantation, Die Spitz, W.I.T.C.H., Earth Tongue, Folk Bitch Trio and Walker's own electronic side project Bullant, alongside non-musical programming including a gong bath led by drummer Michael "Cavs" Cavanagh, a drag story hour and acid yoga.
Alien Metal is out now via the band's own p(doom) Records, and sits within rock, indie and the release calendar on MusicSuey.
The facts
- The album is called Alien Metal
- It arrived at midnight on Friday, August 14
- It is the band's 28th album, spanning eight tracks
- It was made almost entirely on the band's modular synth rig, Nathan
- It follows 2023's The Silver Cord and 2025's Phantom Island
- It was released alongside the band's Field of Vision festival in Colorado, livestreamed for 45 hours
How this checks out
Confirmed
Reported by 3 independent outlets
Independent outlets reported it separately, enough to treat it as confirmed.
Cited sources 3
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