PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation and The Silver Cord by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

Without doing any actual research, I would assume that more often than not, a band’s debut album is where most of us start listening to a band. A debut album often takes years to make, the culmination of songs written and crafted with long-time school friends into a cohesive whole. But maybe you missed their first record, or they hadn’t found their groove yet, so it’s their sophomore record that really hooked you. There are some stellar third albums out there that have gotten me hooked – Radiohead’s OK Computer comes to mind. But never, and I mean never has it taken until a band’s 24th and 25th album for me to finally notice them. But King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are anything but typical.

I’ve known of King Gizzard for a long time, mostly thanks to a couple of good friends who have continually tried to convince me that this crazy group of Australians who are saddled with the somewhat negative label “jam band” are actually good. Pete and Ryan — I hereby declare that you were right. I’m sorry to have ever doubted you. Hailing from Melbourne, the band is made up of six multi-instrumentalists: Stu Mackenzie, Ambrose Kenny-Smith, Joey Walker, Cook Craig, Lucas Harwood, and Michael Cavanagh, all of whom sing in addition to playing too many different instruments to name.

The band has only been around since 2010 and they released their first album in 2012. 24 albums in the following 11 years and it’s clear they are in desperate need of an editor. They are a jam band unlike any other. The genres listed on their wikipedia page are quite varied: psych rock, garage rock, prog rock, and heavy metal, just to name a few.

Let’s look at the two stellar albums they’ve released this year. PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation is a heavy metal album “about humankind, and it’s about planet Earth, but it’s also about witches and dragons, and shit,” according to Mackenzie. This is the album that finally hooked me. The song “Gila Monster,” shown in the video above, is the best song from the album, but it is a head-banging, prog-rock masterpiece that would feel at home in any Tool fan’s collection. The Silver Cord, a true “double album” — with a standard version that runs 28 minutes and an extended version that has longer versions of the same seven songs runs 88 minutes. That’s nearly two hours of music, not that I’m counting. But where PetroDragonic Apocalypse has multiple guitars blaring at every turn, the electropop album The Silver Cord doesn’t have a single guitar on it. This album feels much more like an Animal Collective record. Much like Taylor Swift and her Swifties, the band loves to plant easter eggs and other puzzles within their music, creating a running thread of conspiracy theories and lore throughout their fandom. These two albums are no different – despite sounding wholly different, they are meant to be complementary, a yin and yang. The extended version songs on Cord feature direct callbacks to songs from Apocalypse.

I love a band that is clearly having the most fun doing what they do. Watch the video above for “Gila Monster,” or the other two videos they’ve released from these two albums, for “Dragon” and a three-song “Theia/The Silver Cord/Set,” and you’ll see how ridiculous they can be. They’re very over the top, and everybody knows it. But when you produce fantastic music, people are willing to accept a large amount of ridiculousness from your orbit (again, much like Taylor Swift).

What really sold me on the band was getting to experience them live in late spring 2023. The repeated listenings of Apocalypse and some choice records from their discography in the buildup to the show; the buzz of the fans before, during and after the show despite the torrential downpour for most of it, and even the unexpected early cutoff that clearly angered the band (speakers were cut at 9pm sharp – I guess the band missed that part of the contract when they signed up to play at a farm not accustomed to entertaining thousands of blissed-out showgoers) – all of it culminated in one of the most memorable show-going experiences I’ve ever had.

I get to see them at the Gorge later this year, in late September, where in the past I’ve experienced thunderstorms and extreme winds, blistering heat and bitter cold – who knows what is in store? But I know it’s going to be amazing, and I just can’t wait.

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Fear Inoculum by Tool

There’s nothing like the unexpected. I didn’t expect to be hearing a new Tool album in 2019, and I bet most if not all of you who’ve been following the Top 31 didn’t expect to see Tool on the Top 31, especially this high up in the ranking. And yet.

Fear Inoculum, the fifth record from these prog-rock metal masters, came out at the end of August, to my absolute surprise and delight. Tool released their first album, the nearly triple-platinum selling Undertow way back in 1993 (my freshman year of college). That’s 27 years ago. They followed that up with my favorite Tool album, Ænima, in 1996. Then Lateralus in 2001, and finally 10,000 Days in 2006. I say “finally” for the 2006 album, because nothing came after it for so long.

According to Wikipedia), the band never officially broke up after that 2006 album, but it sure felt like it to me. Their music wasn’t on streaming media, so the only way you could acquire it in the interim was through physical media or illegal download (or potentially “illegal,” or at least “unofficial,” vinyl purchases, which I did by mistake, twice). 13 years, four multi-platinum albums. Then nothing until August 1, 2019, when the band suddenly released their entire catalog on streaming sites (and consequently set a bunch of online download records), along with a new single. Called “Fear Inoculum,” the new single was 10+ minutes long, and consequently set a record itself for longest song ever to appear on the Billboard Top 100. All of a sudden we were swimming in Tool again, seemingly out of nowhere.

The full Fear Inoculum album came out at the end of that month, on August 29, 2019, a full 13 years and 110 days since their previous release. Just to drive the point home, that’s 13 years to make four albums, then another 13 years to make the fifth. And oh was it worth the wait.

Fear Inoculum, in its full digital form, is 86 minutes and 38 seconds of pure, heavy prog-rock bliss (if you buy the physical form of the album, you’re limited to the limitations of the form, consequently get a shorter album, at 79 minutes and 10 seconds, and find that three instrumental interludes have been removed). The album is 100% predictable Tool: it’s loud, guitar and drum heavy, set in a myriad of difficult-to-headbang time signatures, and all capped off by lead singer Maynard James Keenan’s maniacal ramblings. And it’s glorious.

Tool is definitely not for everyone. But if the multi-platinum sales didn’t tell you, I will: the band’s music is definitely for a lot more people than you might otherwise think. They live outside of the smaller confines of any one genre because they cross over so many. The Grammys keep filing them as “metal” (they’ve won four Grammys, most recently for “Best Metal Performance” for the 15+ minute song “7empest” from Inoculum). But “art rock,” “progressive rock,” and “alternative” genres all come with their own fan bases, and they all include Tool squarely in the middle of their boundaries.

While Keenan stands as the crazy, wine-making, child-brained front man of the band, it‘s the drums of Danny Carey and guitars of Adam Jones that really carries the band to greatness. Along with bassist Justin Chancellor, the three of them create the meandering, multi-dimensional music that is “Tool” all the way to the finish line before finally involving Keenan (who is known to be a complete diva) to write lyrics and sing on top. For 26 years now, the band has honed a sound that is unlike anything else out there, and it is perfect.

If you missed the original Tool train, and are only just now discovering them for the first time, then Fear Inoculum is a perfectly fine place to dive in. But if you’re a longtime fan, like me, then Inoculum is going to be so much more. Tool has managed to climb back to the top of the pack, and I can only hope they’re here to stay for another 13 years into the future. Maybe by then they’ll have created a proper video for this album (sorry for the stupid audio-only video above).

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3. Father of the Bride by Vampire Weekend
4. Two Hands + U.F.O.F. by Big Thief
5. Remind Me Tomorrow by Sharon Van Etten
6. I Am Easy to Find by The National
7. 5 + 7 by Sault
8. Giants of All Sizes by Elbow
9. i,i by Bon Iver
10. Kiwanuka by Michael Kiwanuka
11. The Destroyer (Parts 1 + 2) by TR/ST
12. When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? by Billie Eilish
13. Cheap Queen by King Princess
14. Anima by Thom Yorke
15. Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Parts 1 + 2 by Foals
16. Gallipoli by Beirut
17. My Finest Work Yet by Andrew Bird
18. Four of Arrows by Great Grandpa
19. Designer by Aldous Harding
20. Norman Fucking Rockwell! by Lana Del Rey
21. Our Pathetic Age by DJ Shadow
22. Juice B Crypts by Battles
23. Pony by Orville Peck
24. Hyperspace by Beck
25. Eraserland by Strand of Oaks
26. Dogrel by Fontaines DC
27. You’re the Man by Marvin Gaye
28. Big Wows by Stealing Sheep
29. 1000 gecs by 100 gecs
30. In the Morse Code of Brake Lights by The New Pornographers
31. Radiant Dawn by Operators

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#5 on the 2023 Bacon Top 31 — King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard

#2 on the 2019 Bacon Top 31 — Tool