ANAHEIM, Calif. — In 2014, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard‘s first international tour included the Australian band rock band quickly navigating its way through America for the first time. They played dive bars for an audience of sometimes 20 people or less and scrolled for deals on Craigslist for secondhand amps.
“Things have changed drastically,” said bassist Lucas Harwood on a recent videoconferencing call.
At the time of our interview, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard were preparing for shows in Tennessee. The group has been out on its USA Residency Tour, and unlike its early tours in the states, this time around they’re able to bring their families along and soak in the scenery by staying in small cozy cabins in the woods near a lake. The North American leg of this tour ends with a marathon three-hour set at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on June 21.
“It’s super beautiful, very green and lush,” Harwood said of his current spot. “It’s nice, and this whole tour is a bit different like that because we’re in each city for a few nights, and we get to set up base, and we’re not constantly moving. We’ve only played one show, but it already feels very different from our usual touring style.”
The contrast between how the band toured then and now is emblematic of how far the band has come from its early do-it-yourself touring years to topping event lineups. Last year, the group started their fall tour with a headlining performance at Desert Daze, America’s most prominent psychedelic rock festival in Perris.
That tour marked a milestone for the band, who performed at the largest North American venues of their career, which included a show at the 9,500-capacity Red Rocks Amphitheatre just outside Denver. On this run, the band sold-out a trio of shows (two in the evening and one early show) at Red Rocks, on of which was a special extended performance as the band delivered a three-hour marathon set with jam sessions, deeper cuts and a playful intermission. Their next three-hour marathon show, their largest in America to date, will be the 17,500-capacity Hollywood Bowl gig.
For most musicians, performing for three hours can feel like an uphill battle, but for King Gizzard, it’s a natural fit for a band that’s evolved from improvisational jamming to set lists constructed with a unique precision that avoids repeating the same songs from past performances.
“One thing we noticed pretty early on in the States, a kind of cultural thing here, was that there was a small group of fans that were basically following us around the country and traveling to multiple shows,” Harwood said. “We felt bad that we were playing the same songs every night to the extent that we thought we owed them a bit more in return for their dedication. But, also to help stimulate us because if you play the same set every night, it does start to get monotonous and you kind of start to drift off a little bit because you can just play by muscle memory.”
King Gizzard’s discography hops around different genres and sounds made up of loopy psychedelia, heavy metal riffage, and synth-filled electro-pop with a spirit of prog and garage rock jams. The jam band element allows the group an edge in playing those seemingly daunting marathon shows.
“It’s instilled this confidence in us with just getting up there and not knowing where a song is going to go, and I think we’ve become better at playing, hearing, and kind of cueing off each other,” Harwood said.
In the last couple of marathon shows, the band has incorporated 15-minute intermissions with their own tracks that are synched to a clock with two beats per second and paired with the artistic visuals of Jason Galea, who also creates all the band’s album artwork and shoots their photography.
Harwood said the intermissions allow the band to take a break, but said they’re still debating whether to include some of those intermissions for the upcoming show at the Hollywood Bowl or to keep playing through the three hours.
“It has been a cool concept that fans have really responded to, but we’ve been talking about it, and the 15-minute interval for us kind of breaks the flow of the show a little bit,” Harwood said.
He credits the ability to pull off marathon shows with the band’s growth as musicians and the increased size of their production and catalog. King Gizzard has produced 24 albums, five of which were put out in the same year. Their upcoming release, “PetroDragonic Apocalypse, or Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation,” will be out on Friday.
The new album delves a step further into thrash metal from their 2019 release, “Infest The Rat’s Nest.” Harwood hasn’t been too involved in recording the heavy metal albums, but said that the big four (Anthrax, Megadeth, Metallica and Slayer) have been influential in the process, and that the band spends much of their time listening to Tool.
“I love playing this music and listening to it, but I’m not as deep in on it as them,” he said. “I didn’t have that phase where I was learning that music, so it’s been cool for me to be kind of introduced to that music and learn how to play it.”
In a very much on-brand King Gizzard move, the group is already wrapping up their next studio album, which Harwood teases is stylistically unlike anything they’ve released.
“It’s really exciting in that thinking about performing those songs, which made us reimagine and rearrange our live production, will also allow us to unlock a kind of portion of our catalog that we’ve never played live before,” he said. “I think that will start to make sense when we start releasing music off of the next album. That’s all I can give away right now.”
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard at Hollywood Bowl
When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 21
Where: Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Los Angeles
Tickets: $29-79 at hollywoodbowl.com
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