King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have announced the details of their second album release of 2023, “The Silver Cord”. The synth-heavy LP is out October 27th and follows the progressive thrash metal album “PetroDragonic Apocalypse or Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation”, issued back in June.
The band revealed little else besides the seven-song track-list and cover art in its social media announcement of the album. One thing we do know, however, is that the album will arrive in both standard and extended editions. This falls in line with KGLW’s move over the past several years into lengthier compositions, inspired by the band’s jam-friendly approach to group song writing. Singer/guitarist Stu Mackenzie said prior to the release of 2022’s “Omnium Gatherum” that the band had entered its “jamming period,” a trend that extended into this year’s return to thrash on “PetroDragonic, which featured lengthy, multi-part songs.
The other piece of information Gizzard supplied to fans in the post, the album cover, hints at a Kraftwerk influence. The band’s six members appear in all-black outfits, donning matching red sunglasses, and are walled in by a fortress of vintage synthesizers. Other in-studio photos posted by the band earlier this week, in which just about every member is shown playing some sort of synth, also hit at the significance of that aesthetic on the album.
“It’s definitely more synth-y,” said guitarist/vocalist Joey Walker which compared it to 2020’s pandemic-assembled dance record “Butterfly 3000“. “You could draw comparisons in many ways, but just in the nature of us being in the same room and playing and writing together, it’s vastly different than “Butterfly.”
“The Silver Cord” also completes another yin-yang album cycle for King Gizzard. The stylistic chameleons often jump radically from one genre to the next, just as the synth-heavy “Butterfly 3000” preceded the jam-focused “Omnium Gatherum“, with plenty more examples going back through two dozen prior albums.
“I probably wouldn’t use the term ‘companion piece’ myself because I’m thinking of it like they are two records with completely different DNA and completely different personalities,” Mackenzie said of “The Silver Cord‘s” relationship with its predecessor.
“The Silver Cord“, available for pre-order October 12th
The Fat Angel Sings 