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Aug 16, 2019 Web Exclusive By Stephen Mayne

The ability to surprise is a valuable commodity, one too often in short supply. Enter King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, combining one of the best names in music with a prodigious work ethic and an unerring knack for leftfield diversions.

About the only thing that can be guaranteed with this oddball Australian seven-piece is that it’s hard to tell what each record is going to bring. And given the band has more than a dozen albums out already, including five in one year in 2017, that’s quite a feat.

Infest the Rats’ Nest is the fifteenth to be precise, and the second in 2019 after the surprisingly bluesy Fishing for Fishies. That country hayseed lackadaisicalness is long gone, replaced by headbanging, hard charging rock. It’s fast, frenetic, full of cramp inducing riffs and battering fills, and, because it’s King Gizzard, an awful lot of fun.

The usual madcap stories play out over this sound. The earth is falling apart and a band of pioneers are off to the stars for a new start. As “Perihelion” has it, “space is a place/for the human race.” But first chaos has to unfold, as it does on the pulsatingly brilliant “Superbug” that roars “Superbug gave a shrug/and ate all your prescription drugs.”

Infest the Rats’ Nest can sometimes feel like a band playing at the harder edges of its sound just because, but when it comes together on tracks like “Mars for the Rich” or “Venusian 2,” who really cares. The whole King Gizzard thing is so happily uncool at times that it can’t help but be cool.

What comes next then? Impossible to say but it will likely come soon and just as likely sound nothing like this, so enjoy before the new inevitable leftfield diversion arrives. (www.kinggizzardandthelizardwizard.com)

Author rating: 6.5/10