Album Review: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Infest The Rats' Nest
21st August 2019
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‘Planet B’, the first track from the Australian psych-rock phenomenon King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s fifteenth studio album, arrived just before this spring’s Fishing For Fishies was released to a mix of praise and perplexity.
It heralded the arrival of a second 2019 record alongside a new, all-out thrash metal sound. Infest The Rats’ Nest picks up on the environmental themes of the previous album but instead of human beings creating the conditions for parasites to thrive, it’s collective humanity who are vermin blight on every new world they touch.

Album Art 'Infest The Rats' Nest' (2019)
Whereas Fishing For Fishies dipped its toe in boogie rock and vacillated half-heartedly between other genres, Infest The Rats’ Nest’s purpose boils down to this: gizzify thrash metal, and it succeeds abundantly. Conceptually it weaves a complex but coherent narrative from start to finish. We are thrust into King Gizzard’s lucid multiverse by the twin attack of dual drummers driving a riff to the slogan visible at many a climate protest – “There is no Planet B”, and here the couplet is completed with “Open your eyes and see”. ‘Planet B’ has had a do-over since its single iteration and the song’s elements are that bit more defined on the album mix. It’s notable for being the only track that addresses our present directly, referencing the race to commodify services (“monetisation”) and the global migration crisis (“population exodus”). This soon slides into apocalyptic decline with an Edwin Muir-like evocation of the abandonment of agriculture (“rusting tractors”) on an arid Earth – our “dry nurse”.
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