King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, “PetroDragonic Apocalypse or Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation.”

Can you believe that it’s already June and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are just getting around to releasing their first album of 2023? Last year we got FIVE albums! So maybe the boys from Melbourne are slowing down. But they’re definitely not quieting down. PetroDragonic Apocalypse takes up where 2019’s Infest the Rat’s Nest left off. The album is a paean to all things metal, from galloping guitars and pugilistic percussion to Cookie-Monster-style vocal roars over muted power chord breakdowns.

The new LP—PetroDragonic Apocalypse or Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation—is a good enough metal album to attract fans who’ve never heard the name King Gizzard uttered inside their denim and spiked leather sanctums, as well as entertain fans of Gizzard’s weirder, more psychedelic material with its unique mixture of tribute to and parody of metal’s excesses.

“Motor Spirit,” the opener, is over eight minutes long and draws comparisons to both the primitive vocal melodies of bands like Motörhead and the frenetic muted power chords of Kerry King’s Slayer. Midway through, the song’s frenetic and double-time snare and bass drumbeat is augmented with congas and the lead guitar takes on a soaring non-Western vibe. The album’s liner notes lists five of the band’s members as vocalists, so it’s impossible to tell who sings the song’s over-the-top lyrics: “Oh holy rabble, we art ensnared to quiver liketh rippled air/ Diocese of did melt sand/ Worship with thy chroming hand/ Coal-black cloud horizon maketh land-born petromyzon/ Summon forth thy motor spirit/ Drink the fuckin’ gas and killeth.”

“Super Cell” and “Gila Monster” blend the sophisticated rhythm guitar of early Metallica with the punk energy of New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands like Iron Maiden and Saxon. “Converge” sounds more like classic Motörhead but slightly more sophisticated both melodically and lyrically.

“I am removed/ I am a cloud/ In peering down, I am endowed/ Motor spirit, that brought me here/ Fly to the moon/ I have no fear,” someone sings with a Lemmy-esque growl.

The album concludes with a pair songs that clock in at more than nine minutes each. “Dragon” stretches metal into new territory with its carefully choreographed breakdowns and rave-ups. The pummeling full-bore guitar riffing gives way to a bass-and-drum breakdown. Soaring parallel guitar leads offer a brief Thin Lizzy flavor. The lyrics are straight “Dungeons & Dragons:” “Gila is the aether/ Quintessence and preacher/ Aura drinker/ Spirit shrinker/ The one true God/ Vile smile/ ‘Mental yolks/ Nymphs, sylphs and pygmy’s choke/ Drink the blood/ Tasting Tchort/ What hath God wrought?”

Closer “Flamethrower” eventually tempers its rigid power metal riffs with spacey synths. The lyrics are part Gandalf the Wizard and part Tyler Durden from “Fight Club.” “I drink lakes of motor oil/ I engulf and I inflame/ I disrupt the natural order/ I come of wind and I come of cloudburst rain/ I am the high priestess/ I spew motor spirit breath/ I will torch the ISS/ The last enemy to be destroyed is death/ Fire-pious church-goer/ Flamethrower.”

Your guess is as good as mine as to where King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are heading next, musically after 24 albums. And that’s a good thing. Instead of occupying a single musical niche, which would make marketing the band much simpler, the band views genres as tools and materials for the creation of something wholly new, a psychedelic creole that feels fresh in world of single-ingredient flavors.

Follow writer David Gill at Twitter.com/saxum_paternus.