On Monday, Australian psych-rock phenomenons King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard played the third of a string of Red Rocks shows and absolutely fucked the venue up, tearing it apart on a molecular level and changing its landscape forever. It was a show that disintegrated the soul, turned the bones to ash and left the remnants of all in attendance swirling into the ether. It began as an onslaught and transformed into something else as the night waned on, ending as an amorphous thing that felt like some entity ripping through dimensions to warn the crowd of their impending doom, opening their eyes and sending them spiraling into madness. Brutality and beauty converged that sweet early September night, one the Rocks will remember long after those who were there to bear witness have come and gone.
READ: Review — You’ll Never Shred as Hard as King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
It should be mentioned that this was the second show that Gizz had played that day. Following a monstrous Sunday night on the Rocks, they started the day with a matinee show, so take note that the band was doing all this after having already played a huge set earlier in the day.
Brooklyn-based indie up-and-comers Geese kicked things off. They’ve been quickly making a name for themselves over the last couple of years and for good reason. The band’s got balls. They could easily allow themselves to fall into a pocket of “New York Cool” bands that wish they were The Strokes and have a pretty decent career. However, Geese transcends the familiar aspects of their sound, using them more as a way to get the listener hooked so that they may focus more on that which makes them special in the way the best bands do. As a result, they show the makings of greatness. Think The Dandy Warhols, LCD Soundsystem, and, of course, The Strokes. Geese have courage and a willingness to dive into atonal chaos during their set while also keeping the crowd from getting too lost. Their crooning vocals, droning yet melodic guitar parts and truly dynamic rhythm section draw the listener in until the band is ready to attack them with unexpected time and vibe changes that feel organic but intentional. Their set was great, the perfect opener for Gizz, and they’re absolutely a band worth keeping an eye on.
Finally, the time for Gizz was nigh. The sun had gone down already, the stars above the Rocks faint in the glowing light of the stage as the crowd waited to witness the apocalypse. The band hit the stage with a quick “How’s it going, Red Rocks?” before launching into “Perihelion” off Infest the Rats Nest, the band’s 2019 thrash record. The song caused tectonic plates beneath the feet of the crowd to shift, almost like the Earth itself was in defiance of the chaos that was being unleashed upon its surface.
This was just the beginning of the brutality as they then doubled down with “Motor Spirit” and “The Great Chain of Being,” two songs that feel like the sun exploding, engulfing all that exists in flame. Vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Stu Mackenzie has this ability to sing from his throat, which, combined with the shredding going on from the band, creates this droning sense of mysticism, like they’re channeling something from beyond this realm of consciousness, some deific entity hellbent on conquest. This goal was achieved as each in that crowd headbanged their way toward oblivion with minds on fire. They continued burning the crowd alive as they moved into “Flamethrower,” followed by “Wah Wah” and “Road Train.”
Before they began their Red Rocks run, King Gizzard stated that no songs would be repeated throughout their time on the Rocks. This policy included the songs played during their similar three-show-in-two-day run last year. This is simultaneously exciting and confounding. The band has the largest output that this writer thinks he’s ever seen. They have so much music: 26 studio albums and 33 live albums released in the last 13 years, a slew of singles, EPs, experimental projects and videos on top of that. It allows the band to constantly explore new sounds, each project something unique while always remaining true. They cover so many genres from psychedelic dance-pop to hip-hop to brutal thrash metal and all and everything in between. As a result, it’s quite difficult to keep up with everything they put out, and it was around this point in the show that the band moved into songs with which this writer simply wasn’t familiar. This was to be expected as the band recently released a new album, Flight b741, from which they played quite a bit but also because, honestly, as much as this writer listens to and thinks he knows about King Gizzard, there’s a whole lot that he hasn’t heard.
This lack of familiarity with many of the songs that were played felt strangely fitting for the disorienting nature of the show. The initial 30 or 40-minute onslaught put the crowd in a daze. A sense of being lost somewhere not meant for human perception pervaded as King Gizzard began to show their merciful side. They began to lean away from the more straightforward metal and into their more melodic and psychedelic inclinations. Still, the intensity remained as the band conjured the breadth of the universe, each passing note a galaxy of its own. Stars cascaded down from the heavens and collided with each other somewhere deep in the subconscious of each in attendance. It was like witnessing some hidden secret buried by time and the conflicting beliefs of mankind, the truth now finally revealed. During this part of the show, they played “Ambergris,” a fan favorite from 2022’s Omnium Gatherum, and “People-Vultures” off 2016’s beloved Nonagon Infinity. Still, there were so many more songs played that these songs felt like anchors to reality, pieces of the greater whole.
As the show began to wane, it took yet another turn. A table replete with keyboards and what looked to be a thousand wires was brought out. Mackenzie, fellow vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Ambrose Kenny-Smith and multi-instrumentalist Joey Walker gathered around it and turned the show into a psychedelic house show for most of the time remaining. It was amazing just witnessing the sheer audacity, the confidence and commitment the band showed as the crowd switched from headbanging to jumping and pumping fists. It was as if the band, after taking the crowd through the apocalypse and shooting them out into the universe, were now bringing those still in attendance back to Earth and showing them that there still might be hope for humanity yet. They kept going until their time ran out and the show came to an end, the crowd now displaced within the typical perception of time, their very essence entwined with Red Rocks until the death of the universe.
303 Magazine could not have a photographer attend, so photography was sourced from the band.