KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard announce their new double LP album, PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation, out June 16th on KGLW, and present its lead single/video, “Gila Monster.” PetroDragonic Apocalypse, King Gizzard’s 24th album, is where the moon becomes full and their gnarly lycanthrope-selves take control again. It is the group’s second album-length excursion into thrash — following 2019’s Infest The Rats’ Nest — though, as you might expect from such a relentlessly creative unit, PetroDragonic Apocalypse is no mere retread of Rats’ Nest’s gory glories, but rather a full evolutionary step all its own.

Lead single, “Gila Monster” is a first-glimpse at PetroDragonic Apocalypse’s high-octane thrash greatness. The accompanying video was directed by SPOD, who explains: “I wanted to shoot Lord of the Rings 4 but also make a video game, so I mixed both mediums and came up with this majestic journey for truth and power in a cursed world. I mixed 3D animation, modeling & live footage in a 3D video game program to create this marvelous voyage of man & beast. Friend or foe?”

In 2019, the questing young dudes of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard cracked open the door that led to full-on thrash-metal nirvana with their concept album Infest The Rats' Nest. The LP allowed the group to tap into their inner metalhead, to commune with the pre-teen heshers they’d once been. An off-the- cuff experiment, Rats’ Nest went on to become one of the group’s favorites among their discography, and the album’s neck-snapping, devil’s-horn- throwing anthems remain highlights in Gizzard setlists to this day, stirring moshpits into ecstasy every night. It had been intended as a one-off, but ever since that maiden voyage into the feral wastelands of thrash, the Gizzards have heard the siren call of metal in the wind.