Infest The Rats Nest - King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard: Review
are and Australian rock band who have spent most of this decade dropping consistently evolving albums that explore a huge variety of thematic and musical concepts. This is their second record of 2019 after taking 2018 off on the back of releasing 5 albums in 2017.
Review By Lavender:
With a band that drops as much material as King Gizz there will obviously be some inconsistencies, but the highs are seriously some of the fieriest rock moments of the decade. Nonagon Infinity, Murder Of The Universe and Paper Mache Dream Balloon are each wonderful records but they explore some very different ideas and musical approaches in their tunes. Their first record of 2019 was one that I wasn't as high on as many of my favorites from the group, Fishing For Fishies was a corny and far too jammy album with just as many lows as highs, a catchy set of tracks but far from a memorable one. That's why I was so excited to hear the band go in a completely different direction on this album as Rats Nest is an honest to god thrash metal record straight out of 1986 that not only adopts the sound effectively, but also manages to add a quintessential Gizzard edge to it.
This review will be pretty short as across this record Gizz plays homage to thrash metal history with a very consistent sound, the guitars rip, the vocals are massive and anthemic and the percussion is technical and speedy. Singles from the record like Planet B and Self-Immolate are some of the best metal songs I've heard all year giving the classic sound a 2019 shade that comes with apocolyptic instrumentals and socially conscious themes. A tune that snuck up on me with its excellence was Mars For The Rich, not only an important point on the albums loose storyline but some of the sharpest guitar work on the entire record mixed with Judas Priest-esque vocals that absolutely burn the fucking house down. The track also has a simple but very effective chorus that has proven to be one of the catchiest and most memorable moments on the entire record for me.
Venusian 1 and Perihelion are back to back on this record and both are unashamed jams with rapid fire and consistently impressive soloing as well as heavy and chunky mixing that makes these songs bump just as much as the classics they idolize. Organ Farmer is a short track that really hits the ground running and features some crazy chanting all over it with some zany and rapidly evolving instrumentation that makes for a truly throttling few minutes. Hell is the closing track and pretty much embodies the rest of what is here as well as including a total sonic switch-up right at the end that provides one last left hook from the record to the listener right at the end of the record.
Not all these tracks are perfect but when I have problems on this record they typically aren't big ones. Superbug has a good song in its core but at nearly 7 minutes long there is more than a few moments I would cut off here given the chance. The opening stoner metal riffs are great but the song tends to slow down a bit after this and every time its very long and very uneventful chorus comes on I spend most of it waiting for whatever more interesting passage will come later. Venusian 2 is the only track here that suffers from a production standpoint as much of this record sounds so natural and heavy but the compression on both the vocals and guitars here is both a weird artistic choice and a lackluster experiment. The song itself isn't one of the most interesting here but given that the rough post-production is layered over it I just don't really love listening to this track and I think it's the records lone skippable moment.
Invest The Rats Nest is the most recent in a long line of successful experiments from King Gizz and will certainly be one of the best and hardest records you'll hear all year. Their ability to meld their instantly recognizable style with a killer prowess for a genre that hasn't been in vogue for decades. This is definitely in the top half of King Gizz records in terms of musicality and creativity, adding on a great musical concept to match and the record kind of makes me with I had a more detailed scoring system as it feels right in the middle of a 7.5 and an 8. But rather than throw the system I've used for years out the door over one album I will concede and give a great band the benefit of the doubt that the songs will grow on me and award the album a well deserved but very soft 8.
And for more Gizz check out my review of Fishing For Fishies here.
