Fans call the connections between King Gizzard's albums the Gizzverse. Recurring characters, themes, artwork and riffs that keep turning up across the discography. It's not one story told in order, more a shared world the records all seem to sit in.
The name caught on in the r/KGATLW subreddit in January 2017, after someone posted a diagram trying to map it all out. Nonagon Infinity had just come out and made the links hard to miss. The band drops the hints; fans do the joining up.
Stu's compared it to Frank Zappa's "conceptual continuity", meaning everything an artist makes is really one connected work. Nobody's totally sure how much is planned and how much is fans joining dots.
“They all exist in this parallel universe and they may be from different times and different places, but they all can co-exist in a meaningful way.”
— Stu Mackenzie, 2017
THE GALACTIC CENTRE
I'm in Your Mind Fuzz ⇄ Nonagon Infinity
Fans treat these two as the centre of the whole thing. They use the same cover image, a castle above the clouds on a jagged mountain. Same world, two records.
The endless loop Nonagon Infinity is known for, where the last track runs straight back into the first, was actually tried first on I'm in Your Mind Fuzz, in the run of "I'm in Your Mind / I'm Not in Your Mind / Cellophane / I'm in Your Mind Fuzz." People reckon the two albums are joined by a kind of wormhole.
There's foreshadowing too. The red-cloaked figures with see-through faces on the I'm in Your Mind Fuzz cover went unexplained until Nonagon Infinity picked up the same imagery two years later.
The band's confirmed the two are deliberately linked. The wormhole part is fans reading into it, but it holds up.
The storylines
Murder of the UniverseThe band's most straight-up concept album. Three linked suites, ending with the universe getting wiped out.2017
I · The Tale of the Altered Beast
Someone comes across a half-human, half-beast creature and can't shake the urge to become it. It's about wanting to be something other than what you are.
II · The Lord of Lightning vs. Balrog
A fight between the Lord of Lightning and the Balrog. Light against dark, kicked off by technology getting in the way, which happens a lot on these records.
III · Han-Tyumi & the Murder of the Universe
By now everyone's uploaded their minds into robot bodies. One of them, Han-Tyumi, misses two very human things: dying, and throwing up. He builds a machine to bring them back, it malfunctions, and the vomit never stops. Enough to swallow the whole universe.
Narrated by Leah Senior and a robotic text-to-speech voice. This is where Han-Tyumi becomes the centre of everything.
Crumbling CastleThe castle that's been on the covers for years finally falls into the sea.2017
The citadel and the rising sea
People shelter inside a huge castle, the same one that's turned up in the artwork since I'm in Your Mind Fuzz, while the ocean rises to swallow everything. They wait for the end.
The castle crumbles
"Crumbling Castle" drops it all into the water. The castle stands in for anything people build and can't hold onto. "Castle in the Air" is on the same record.
Polygondwanaland is left behind
Out of the wreckage a new supercontinent turns up, Polygondwanaland, and whoever's left goes to explore it. Same rough shape as Murder of the Universe: a world falling apart, mostly from environmental collapse.
The band gave this one away for free, into the public domain, so anyone could press their own copy.
Infest the Rats' NestTheir thrash-metal climate album. Earth's cooked, the rich leave for Mars, everyone else is stuck.2019
There is no Planet B
Climate change has made Earth barely livable. The rich have gone to terraform Mars. Everyone who can't afford a ticket is left behind. "Mars for the Rich" spells out the class angle.
Superbug
Factory farming and disease catch up with everyone. A superbug breaks out and wipes most people out, so the last plan is Venus.
Venus, Hell, and the amber door
Venusian 1 blows up on the way. Venusian 2 lands, but Venus turns out to be hell, so a lot of people self-immolate. The dead go to actual Hell, meet Satan, and get pointed through an amber door back to Mars.
Their first proper thrash record. Heavy climate message, told entirely as sci-fi.
PetroDragonic Apocalypse"It's about humankind, and it's about planet Earth, but it's also about witches and dragons and shit."2023
Witchcraft in the real world
With no way out, people try witchcraft to undo the damage they've done. It goes badly.
The Gila Monster becomes the Dragon
The spell turns a harmless gila monster into a giant fire-breathing dragon. It rides the storms, learns to fly, and makes wrecking the planet even easier.
The Dragon is us
The dragon keeps getting tied back to our appetite for burning fossil fuels.
It's paired with The Silver Cord as a Yin/Yang thing. Same ideas, one done as thrash and one as synths.
The Silver CordThe synth twin of PetroDragonic. The soul leaving the body.2023
The cord
The title comes from the silver cord of astral projection, the thread that's supposed to keep your spirit tied to your body while it wanders off. Cut it and you don't get back.
Out of the body
PetroDragonic is all fire and flesh. This one's all synths and drifting, about leaving the physical world behind. Same apocalypse, opposite sound.
Came out a few weeks after PetroDragonic in 2023, built as its deliberate opposite.
The closest thing the Gizzverse has to a main character. A cyborg voiced by text-to-speech, whose name is an anagram of "humanity." Once he's in a robot body he misses being able to die and to vomit, builds a machine to get them back, and ends up destroying the universe with it. His backstory, including an eye mod that lets him see a fourth primary colour, is hidden in the Polygondwanaland vinyl.
Murder of the UniverseNonagon Infinity ("Robot Stop")Cyboogie (reversed lines)Polygondwanaland (vinyl Easter egg)Fishing for Fishies (cover)
The Frog
The Field of Vision mascot
The frog from the band's Field of Vision festival posters. Jason Galea draws them. There's no deep lore behind it, people just love the thing.
Field of Vision festivalsJason Galea posters
The Gator
The river creature
An alligator that keeps turning up in Jason Galea's videos. It plays an electric piano on the riverbank in "Cyboogie," and drifts through "Fishing for Fishies" and "The River." Fits the water-and-nature feel of that stretch of records.
Fishing for Fishies"Cyboogie" video"The River" video
The Dragon
The fossil-fuel beast
The gila monster that witchcraft turns into a fire-breathing dragon on PetroDragonic. It controls the storms and burns the place down. Pretty clearly meant to be us and our fossil fuels.
PetroDragonic Apocalypse
The Altered Beast
The hybrid temptation
The half-human, half-beast creature from Murder of the Universe that someone gets obsessed with turning into. One of the band's recurring themes: wanting to become something else.
Murder of the Universe
Lord of Lightning vs. Balrog
Light against darkness
Light versus dark. The Lord of Lightning and the Balrog (yes, a Tolkien nod) fighting it out. They first showed up on the 2016 singles, then got their big battle in the middle of Murder of the Universe.
Murder of the UniverseLord of Lightning / Balrog singles
Recurring threads
The castle on the mountain
The castle above the clouds shows up on cover after cover, from I'm in Your Mind Fuzz to Nonagon Infinity, and finally sinks in Polygondwanaland's "Crumbling Castle."
The endless loop
Nonagon Infinity's last track loops back into its first, so it never really ends. They'd tried the same trick on I'm in Your Mind Fuzz first.
Eyes and see-through faces
Faces you can see through, eye modifications, a fourth primary colour only Han-Tyumi can perceive. Eyes and seeing come up a lot.
The planet falling apart
Climate and environmental collapse runs through a lot of it. Fishing for Fishies, Infest the Rats' Nest, K.G./L.W. and PetroDragonic all keep coming back to it.
Machines and lost humanity
Minds put into robots, cyborgs trying to feel human again, technology setting off the bad stuff. What's left of people once the machines take over.
Microtonal tuning
Three albums (Flying Microtonal Banana, K.G., L.W.) played on custom guitars with extra frets, so they can hit the notes between the usual notes. Borrowed from Middle Eastern and Turkish music.
Riffs that come back
Riffs and basslines move between albums. The I'm in Your Mind Fuzz medley turns up again in Murder of the Universe, for one. The music does the connecting as much as the lyrics do.
Jason Galea's artwork
Galea's done nearly every cover and most of the videos since 2012. The reptiles, the robed figures, the frog, the castle: it's all him, which is a big part of why the records feel connected.
Quirks
They gave an album away
Polygondwanaland (2017) went out free, into the public domain, with the master files and artwork, so anyone could press their own. Hundreds of fan-made vinyl and cassette versions exist because of it.
K.G. and L.W. are the band
K.G. (2020) and L.W. (2021) are named after the band's own initials, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, split across two records.
Five albums in a year. Twice.
They put out five albums in 2017, then did it again in 2022: Made in Timeland, Omnium Gatherum, Ice Death Planets Lungs Mushrooms and Lava, Laminated Denim and Changes.
Hidden in plain sight
"Laminated Denim" (2022) is an anagram of "Made in Timeland," the album right before it. Both are two 15-minute jams.
Messages in reverse
Han-Tyumi's lines at the end of "Cyboogie" are backwards, and there's a hidden reversed message on Fishing for Fishies.
A magic-eye cover
Butterfly 3000's cover is one of those autostereograms. Unfocus your eyes at it and a 3D butterfly appears. Fitting, since the album's about metamorphosis.
Marathon shows, given away
They play three-hour sets and multi-night runs where no song repeats, then give away the recordings for free through the Official Bootlegger program.
Recorded rough on purpose
The 2012 debut, 12 Bar Bruise, was partly recorded on handheld recorders and phones. Same band later built its own microtonal guitars.
Canon, or fan theory?
A lot of the fun is not knowing how much the band planned and how much fans read in. Roughly, here's where the line sits.
CONFIRMED BY THE BAND
◆The albums are deliberately connected. "They all exist in this parallel universe." (Stu Mackenzie)
◆"Before we started a band we knew what the last album was gonna be." (Eric Moore)
◆Han-Tyumi, the three parts of Murder of the Universe, and the stories on Infest the Rats' Nest and PetroDragonic are all spelled out on the records.
◆The band says the project can "effectively go on forever."
FAN THEORY
◇The full connecting diagram, and the I'm in Your Mind Fuzz / Nonagon Infinity "wormhole."
◇Which repeated images are on purpose and which are just Galea's style changing over time.
◇How neatly every album fits one single timeline. The band leaves that open.
Both readings are fine.
The discography
ALL 27
2012
12 Bar Bruise
The garage-rock debut, tracked fast and rough, partly on handheld recorders, by a seven-piece with two drummers.
2013
Eyes Like the Sky
A spoken-word "cult western audiobook" narrated by Broderick Smith. Outlaws and frontier violence.
2013
Float Along – Fill Your Lungs
Mellow folk-psych that opens with the sixteen-minute raga-drone "Head On/Pill."
2014
Oddments
A melodic grab-bag with a lo-fi, recorded-through-a-sock warmth.
2014
I'm in Your Mind Fuzz
Mind control and the four-song "I'm in Your Mind" medley, their first go at the endless loop. A galactic-centre album.
2015
Quarters!
Four songs, each exactly ten minutes and ten seconds. Jazz-fusion acid rock, perfectly quartered.
2015
Paper Mâché Dream Balloon
All acoustic, recorded on a rural farm. Mellow, de-fuzzed psychedelia.
2016
Nonagon Infinity
Nine tracks that loop forever. The anchor of the whole Gizzverse.
Three-suite dark-fantasy concept album. The murder of everything.
2017
Sketches of Brunswick East
A jazzy, improvised collaboration with Mild High Club, made around their Melbourne neighbourhood.
2017
Polygondwanaland
The castle falls into the sea and a new continent is left behind. Released free into the public domain.
2017
Gumboot Soup
The fifth album of 2017. The songs that didn't fit anywhere else, and weren't b-sides.
2019
Fishing for Fishies
Boogie and blues. "Cyboogie," the gator, and a reversed Han-Tyumi message.
2019
Infest the Rats' Nest
Thrash-metal climate parable: flee to Mars, then Venus, then Hell.
2020
K.G.
Microtonal trilogy Vol. 2, the "King Gizzard" half, named for the band's own initials.
2021
L.W.
Microtonal trilogy Vol. 3, the "Lizard Wizard" half that finishes the set.
2021
Butterfly 3000
Synth-prog in all major keys. Metamorphosis and dreams, under an autostereogram cover.
2022
Made in Timeland
Two fifteen-minute tracks pieced from jams, and their first go at rap, ticking to a metronome.
2022
Omnium Gatherum
Everything at once. The 18-minute "The Dripping Tap," plus rap, metal and soul.
2022
Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava
One-take round-robin jams, each member starting a song and the rest following. Narrated by Leah Senior.
2022
Laminated Denim
Two more fifteen-minute krautrock jams. The title is an anagram of "Made in Timeland."
2022
Changes
Years in the making, built around a single recurring chord change. Their jazziest, most soulful turn.
2023
PetroDragonic Apocalypse
Prog-thrash. Witchcraft births a fossil-fuel dragon. Yin to The Silver Cord's Yang.
2023
The Silver Cord
The synth mirror of PetroDragonic. Astral projection, the cord that ties body to soul.
2024
Flight b741
Loose, joyful boogie-rock. The first album on the band's own p(doom) label.
2025
Phantom Island
Orchestral rock. The band's songs scored for a full ensemble.
The six
Stu MackenzieVOCALS, GUITAR, FLUTE, SYNTH
Ambrose Kenny-SmithVOCALS, HARMONICA, SYNTH
Cook CraigGUITAR, SYNTH, VOCALS
Joey WalkerGUITAR, SYNTH, VOCALS
Lucas HarwoodBASS
Michael CavanaghDRUMS
They ran their own label for years, Flightless Records, co-founded with drummer Eric Moore, who left in 2020 to run it full-time. The band's been a six-piece since. In 2024 they started a new label, p(doom) Records. The give-it-away instinct goes back a long way. Polygondwanaland was free, and the Bootlegger program hands out proper live recordings for nothing.
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Sources
Most of this comes from fans who've done the real digging: