The chance to see King Gizzard live in Australia feels rarer than ever, and due to personal circumstances I had resigned myself to not seeing them here. That was fortunately able to happen thanks to several people reading this that know who they are, thank you again.
No recordings have surfaced from their previous shows that I have seen, I thought this was likely to happen again so I was determined to capture the whole thing, and I am infinitely glad I did.
I’ve never recorded music before, so I hung around the stage for a few acts earlier on, scoping out a spot and doing some short tests with the setup. Recording was forbidden at the event and stealth was on my mind, luckily I found a good spot where I could clip the mic and leave the spare phone hidden while I enjoyed the show in the crowd and hoped for the best.

 

The Flying Microtonal Banana was out (as well as someone in the audience in a banana costume), and I quickly spotted Cavs’ Ferrari vest that indicated things might get heavy.
For a festival like this with tightly controlled one hour sets most acts were playing their older hits, so Rattlesnake as opener made probably the most sense. I felt it gave a good idea of the split in the crowd between fans (who tended to stick out) and people just interested in the name enough to show up (this seemed to be the majority). It seemed pretty much everyone was into it very quickly, and while this song is very well worn-in, it's still a great time and makes for a good warm up, in this case it was also freshened up in arrangement with some extra keys from Ambrose.

I had been trying not to overhype myself for particular songs or styles, trusting that it would basically be impossible to be disappointed in the setlist. Any worry I did have was wasted, as the rest of the songs were all released in the time since I last saw the band in 2019.
While Pleura is fairly low in my preferences for microtonal songs, it still went to show how tight the band are in learning and playing newer songs that never had the benefit of being in every setlist for years on end. It was still chill enough to properly start to scope out the crowd, seeking out gaps in front of me to slip through while everyone geared up for some more energetic music; we were immediately satisfied.

Self-Immolate was the first peak in crowd energy, but I still hadn’t quite reached the mosh pit and was focusing on the stage. This was a great song to appreciate Lucas’ enhanced ability and live emphasis since the pandemic, he overall was doing a fantastic job holding it down and keeping it cool during an undeniably scorching song.

Everything stepped up a notch with the segue into the PetroDragonic Apocalypse songs, which of course represent another leap in technical ability for the band, but most of all Cavs, who quite clearly has been maintaining a level of performance fitness that might be equal to the rest of them combined. It became clear that his powerful intro solo for Self-Immolate was merely a warm up. I finally realised that the vest in all the PDA promo is actually a necessity, allowing just that bit of extra mobility around the shoulders that he completely maximised.
It is worth mentioning that it was freezing cold (by our standards), and so Cavs was probably keenest of all to get warmed up, which the band eagerly helped him oblige the crowd in doing.

Now that the most intense moshing was done, the tone and the crowd shifted enough for me to finally make it up to what turned into more of a floor than a pit in preparation for things to get positively mediterranean in temperature.
Deep down, I had been hoping that we would get some jamming; I knew with a short set this would be diminished, so the pacing they managed for the next three songs was incredible.
Really only with DJs in nightclubs have I ever had the space and impetus to dance properly, so it was an absolute joy to get to do the same here at Joey’s instruction. With most of the moshers taking a break, this was a moment that many other people seemed to have been waiting for, and we all emerged to seize it. Never have I been so unified with a whole crowd as during all of Ice V. I really have no idea where all the space came from for us all to be able to move so freely and synchronised for so long.

Twelve minutes of The Dripping Tap was up next, which felt about as long by itself as the whole rest of the set had. Probably something to do with totally giving myself up to the flow and the whim of the mosh pit, which was not the most aggressive I’ve seen, but easily one of the largest and most energetic. I didn’t go all-in as I was trying to conserve energy, but letting myself get swept up was about the most fun I’ve had seeing live music that I can remember.
People all around were quite literally slipping on the drip (and being helped up), and I felt lucky to not lose any of the pins on my jacket and stay on my feet. At least until one of the several rowing circles formed surrounding me, and we all involuntarily, simultaneously fell back on to the ground. It is a very strange group-think phenomenon that I always thought was meant to signify Vikings (and done in Scandinavian metal crowds), but this was more spontaneous and not at all aggressive. It seemed it was no particular person or groups’ idea, but just somehow something that happened to whole segments of the crowd at the same time; perhaps necessary to navigate the puddles formed by all the dripping from the stage.
After most of the song alternately being tossed and spun around by the crowd and rowing on the ground, I made my way back to the edge to catch my breath and cool down where two things caught my attention. One was someone hunched being helped out to the side (I never found out what happened there, but it looked like they were getting the space and attention they needed), the other was a guy standing motionless, still on the edge of the pit, deep in the crowd, motionless, staring at the stage and eating an apple.

Magma, I would have been happy with any other jam-style songs, but this is my favourite track from Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava. It really is a monolithic song, and never as much as when you are seeing and feeling it for an extended duration right in front of you. If TDT was shockingly short, in hindsight I sort of can’t believe that Magma actually went for longer, giving it three minutes over its studio version, while TDT was shortened by six.
I think I mostly stood swaying and got a bit mesmerised alternately watching what the band was doing on stage and closing my eyes to see if it made a difference. All I really remember from this song is a lot of very bright red light with my arms around my partner - who I had miraculously found after making my way back a few rows.
Most of the detail I am appreciating from being able to listen back to the recording, such as the siren-like guitar at 54:00. It sounds a bit like the world ending while all we can do is skip straight past panic and stand around watching. But not in a chaotic way - the volcano rises constantly and consistently out of the ground at a moderate distance, its base widening one increment at a time while the magma oozes out into lava that flows steadily down the slopes, bathing us all in warm light.
A few times through the set I made sure to truly take the moment and live in what was happening around me, and this was the most immanent of those. I was totally struck by how unusual it was for an outlier band like this to capture all these people with what is essentially prog-rock at Australia’s closest equivalent to Coachella.
The finale just kept building and building and building, I still can’t really understand where all the sound was coming from, or what would have happened if the band weren’t able to regain control and stop it.

But they did. We reconvened with another friend, a true gizz-head who was seeing the band for the first time, and had a blast even having lost his beanie and jacket after getting as close to the front as he could.
The weird, massive hour the band had carved out of the festival was over, and we followed Joey’s suggestion to go see Marlon Williams, Little Simz, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Flume, and several others that remained totally eclipsed by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.