your interpretation is very similar to how i heard this album. a journey to shell and how it flows into rolling stoned sounded to me like the world ending all the evil being swallowed up and a return to a garden of eden type thing in rolling stoned
I'm certainly a PDA fanboy but I definitely agree with you, especially on the motifs. I think this was, like all their projects, pretty "experimental", but this being their second foray into metal had me expecting more. Not unlike how I felt about certain songs off of ITRN, I found myself feeling a little tired with certain 'tropes' of the band, namely the 'title of the song is in the track' bit. It's to the point where I can pick out the particular offenders. (Rattlesnake, Automation, Hot Water, Trapdoor, Ya Love, Gila Monster, Converge, Theia) It's sort of sad to see the band capitalizing off of the least creative aspect of their music, but I can't really blame them either. Their experimentation with different aspects of music seems to be at the forefront of this era of albums and it seems like everything else may have been downplayed somewhat. (although admittedly, I also think PDA is one of their tightest narrative albums) I would've loved the album to be a lot heavier and with some better motif-y connections to the prior heavy songs/albums, but. Alas, we get what the King Gizzard provides. I still really enjoyed the ride, despite this album not being their strongest. I thoroughly love Motor Spirit, Dragon, and Flamethrower. The rest can kinda suck eggs imo, though there is a really fun cover of Witchcraft out there.
The linking of these two albums shows us a ton of creativity that the band is still exploring new ideas . And it opens huge doors for us GIZZVERSE nerds who look to far in the details. Tho you are kinda right there were some personal things I would’ve liked to hear different but overall it’s an awesome piece of art.
I think my favourite part of this album is the way it feels spiritually connected to a lot of it's previous albums. There's subtle callbacks to lyrics from PDA, Laminated Demin, Changes, even Polygondwanaland and Infest the Rat's Nest. I'm not sure I understand why they even included the short cuts of the songs. I kind of wish they'd worked harder to make these songs flow better and have more interesting connections to the prior album. They've used musical motifs before to make these things work subtly in the past (trapdoor / the balrog in example) and they do sort of reach a good point with *some* of the lyrics on the extended cuts... but far too often, they resort to directly calling out the name of the song it's tied to. It just wound up sounding sort of... cheap?
Motor Spirit is probably my favourite song of the past few years, and overall I've listened to PDA through hundreds of times since its release - but I absolutely adore your suggestion of adding more Gila/KGLW-esque sound effects into the track mixing. Motor Spirit already feels like the soundtrack to a Mad Max film, so adding some super aggressive motor engines and stuff into that soundscape would be amazing.
I barely listen to this album especially the first half. The first half is way better live than in studio. I dont know whether its how its audio is mastered or some other thing i cant quite pick up but i feel like the music is dampened or something. It just falls short for getting me in the zone to enjoy it. Dragon is easily the best track on the album though. In the end, I believe this is kglw’s first miss for me and falls flat especially when compared to infest the rats nest which was just so much better in every way.
Definitely agree with your take, I've loved the album since it came out and listened to it religiously at this point, but despite being such a good album it still doesn't feel as satisfying as it should be given the themes paired with the genre of music. I definitely can't outright critique Gizzard's approach to songwriting, they're not a band who gives a fuck about how people want them to sound, but if the first half of the record was as hard hitting and meaningfully put together as the latter half, this would be a legendary album. Great album regardless, Gila Monster at a concert absolutely destroys.
Parts of this video may come off as harsh. As much as I do carry the beliefs I express in my videos, these “reviews” are also just a fun outlet for expressing my feelings on music. I can get carried away with some of these notions, but that’s kind of the fun part. For this reason, I wanted to add an extra blurb here just to say that I love this band and the creatives involved with every project. And if you support this channel in any way- you’re also mega dope. Looking forward to the Silver Cord <3 Peace out - DM
based timeland enjoyer but yeah can't say I agree here, I think the high points on some of their recent records are some of the best music the band has ever released and all the post '19 albums have had very few misses for me. some of them definitely had to grow on me over time though, BF3k and LW both sat lower for me until relistening more in 2022. I personally can't agree with your feelings about the mixing either, but I think that largely comes down to a stylistic preference? idk in some cases I'm not even sure what you mean because for example the ending section of Change hits the exact crescendo it's intended to for me but it seemingly didn't for you. same thing about supercell, imo one of the sickest songs on the whole album. anyway, here's hoping next album is the electronic kglw album we've been waiting for
The writing in your videos is so well done, it feels very thorough and detailed but it is very easily digestible. Hellfire was a pretty difficult album for me to write about in my Hellfire video, so yeah I'm very impressed by how natural your writing feels. Great stuff.
You’ve basically summed up my thoughts on their latest albums here. There’s always been something slightly missing from the latest albums that I haven’t really been able to understand. I also agree that all the latest albums are still fucking sick but it feels better in concept than in the recordings on the records. A certain song I noticed was Automation, where when it kicks into gear it’d be sick but it is just a little too quiet and samey to the intro bit in variance of sound, which they kill life but in the recordings I find it a bit flat. Still love the song though. I don’t have much to add as you basically summed up most of my points but good video.
Great video! I'm happy to see I am not the only one to have some "mixed" feelings towards elements of the last few albums. I personally felt this was because of the jammier form of composition they worked with since Omnium. I can understand why they wanted to try it out, since it's a more spontaneous and collaborative approach (something they really wanted to do after lockdown), but on the other hand, I feel this method gives less memorable tracks. Still great tracks (even excellent with Ice V, Iron Lung and the whole Laminated Denim), but not as marking as something from Nonagon or Murder in my humble opinion. I have heard they will come back to a more written way of composing after the 25th album, so we'll see if what I've said has any part of truth. Again, this is just my personal opinion and impressions as a fan of the band since 2021, but I'm happy to find the opportunity to share those impressions. You've made a really interesting analysis, even tho it wasn't scripted. Thank you again!
There’s a direct correlation with the time period you’re talking about and them leaving Flightless Records which was started by one of their members Eric Moore. He left after Rats Nest and subsequent albums have been on their new record label KGLW
I really enjoyed this discourse. So refreshing. Agreed on so many points. All good though. We are extremely lucky to have a band like Gizz holding the reigns.
i have a lot of friends who listen to king gizzard and i think the thing that removes me away from feeling like there was an actual shift is that every single one of them has their own album be the "change" moment. i personally felt it at Fishies and Gumboot, one of my friends feels it happened on Infest the Rats' Nest, i've heard people talk about Ice, Death and Planets like that as well as K.G. although this is why i dont agree with that notion, it's not an actual argument for why thats not the case, so i will present my thoughts now, maybe you will find them interesting. i think completely the opposite has happened and king gizzard never really changed. i feel like the formulaic-ness comes more so from us as fans learning the formula, they just always made songs in this fashion and continue to. i try to make music myself and like to listen to whole discographies for artists i enjoy, and it seems to me that as a person you cant really break out of how your brain.. conjures music? so i feel its more so just what king gizzard is. i feel the same about my music and about every single artist ive listened to, theres always the same themes that are important to the author and there is always the same brain behind the creation of the songs. id like to argue the same about the mixing. i get what you mean by flatness and i hear it too, but i think it was always present, in nonagon, in murder of the universe, even sketches. i literally cant tell the difference in the mixing and the "fullness" of Altered Beast/Alter Me medley with any other newer or older album. the same is when i try to compare Exploding Suns and Countdown from Sketches for example. maybe i lack same amount of attention to detail when it comes to music, so i could be wrong, but this is how i feel: they always did the lo-fi and they wont stop, unless its on theme with album (Infest the Rats' Nest) to be hi-fi, so thats why it always sounds flat like that. in your video you brought up king gizzard connecting their songs more to recent events but i really cant find any other instances of that happening aside from in KG and LW. and of course the lyric symbolism suffers in these records with it. the mixing on these albums is also for sure different from others, but it makes sense when you consider these albums were recorded and mixed during the peak of covid in australia. i would agree with many of the points you give, but when i go back to older albums and give them a listen, im able to point out the same things. in my opinion thats the issue - they didnt change. it kinda also makes sense with how at one hand in the video you talk about the shift in production, but on the other hand you speak of the themes going stale. if you imagine to reverse the order of albums they put out, and have mind fuzz be the newest one, i can imagine feeling like "really? "am i in heaven?" is a song about the destruction of the world due to careless humanity again? dont even start me on "hot water", such an obvious song about climate change, cmon king gizz". and they do get blatant at themes more so in metal songs and less so in non-metal songs (ignoring KG and LW as outliers), and its sort of is the theme they picked. uhh, i think im done, this is very messy and rambly, but i wanted to partake in the discussion, hope i wasnt condesending anywhere or anything negative like that. thanks for reading :D p.s.: i also feel like this feeling of them changing the mixing could result from the switch to hi-fi they did for Infest and then the Covid mixing on KG and LW, so when they returned to what they've always been doing it all felt weird? thats just a hypothesis i have
Oh my god, finally someone agrees with me that Made in Timeland is one of their most interesting projects Also, I kinda agree with your point that the new records don't feel as dynamic and fresh as the older ones.
disclaimer: this is in no way a scripted video. all of the discussion in this are my thoughts given off the top of my head in more of a podcast format. as much as I would have liked to script another kglw video, this more honest approach was more appealing to record and in turn there are plenty of mistakes. Thank you for watching ❤
I had a larger comment prepared for this but I think the point I wanted to make is that the intro to this critique is rough as hell. I think parts of it didn't have the right context to not make you sound a little fanboy-ish at times but I think as you started presenting your points with evidence it started becoming a lot stronger and a lot more thought provoking. Good job on the video, I'm glad someone was able to put into words how I felt about some of the changes on the newer albums in a non-snobby or hyperbolic way.
What a great analysis! This album helped me find my own musical and emotional personality, heard it first at age 16, loved it and still hold it dearly in my heart. It inspired me to make my own music no matter how crazy, "home made" or "elevator-jazzlike" people could percieve it.
I feel like this album is massively under appreciated by king gizz fans. I came across it because of mild high club and the majority of his fans seem to loved it.
i always thought that the character singing in this album had a smile on their face the entire time. dancing, singing laughing and living. but i also imagined them crying the entire time.
This album is very underrated, thank you for the video. The only thing to note: the font that you have choose for the text is unreadable for non native speaking English. Please be more kind for a foreigners
