The Lizard Wizard flies high

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      King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard

      Nonagon Infinity (ATO)

      Australia’s best-named band, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard has built a glowing reputation as a brilliantly incendiary live act. Anyone doubting their performance prowess would be well-advised to check out their latest studio effort, Nonagon Infinity. This is an absolute barnburner of an album, flying high and flowing smoothly from one end to the other through scintillating vignettes of the most blistering psychedelic rock heard this side of Goat. This is as close to capturing the group’s live energy as you are going to get without having the longhaired septet right there, sweating on you.

      Amazingly, Nonagon Infinity is the band’s eighth release in the past five years, and most of them are noticeably different from each other. This album is much darker and fiercer than its previous effort, 2015’s dreamy, light-jazz-and-sunshine-pop-fuelled Paper Mâché Dream Balloon. If that album was cosmically held together by floating flute, this one is nailed coffin-tight with hard-core harmonica.

      Important to note: Nonagon Infinity is a literal title. The album is the aural equivalent of an ouroboros, with its sequence of nine seamlessly linked tracks designed to be looped ad nauseam, or at least until the listener cracks, buys a heroic stash of amphetamines, and drives a white 1970 Dodge Challenger at top speed toward the vanishing point.

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