The opening track of 2017’s boundary-pushing and royalty free Polygondwanaland is its longest — a ten minute behemoth called “Crumbling Castle.” In a castle somewhere, its inhabitants are threatened by rising green tides that inch their way up the land as storms blare overhead. However the song’s protagonist, glassy-eyed and divine, mentions that they may have hints as to what the future holds. The answers lie within Polygondwanaland, a mythical land which the rest of the album explores.
The song is a perfect opener, setting up the album’s progressive rock influence with its fluctuating time signatures, nearly eleven minute length and fantasy setting. Looking back it seemed destined to be an essential Gizzard track, it checks all the boxes. Strange but evocative lyrics, complex compositions, jams that will open the mosh pit… “Crumbling Castle” really has it all. The band has played the song pretty consistently since its release and it’s hard to blame them for it. Yet all classics have to come from somewhere. “Crumbling Castle” didn’t just come to them in a dream one night. So what’s the deal? Well, the history of the song is actually a bit strange. It involves shortened versions, a leak, potentially getting cut off an album and some live show changes.
The earliest known performance of “Crumbling Castle” was on 2016-8-29 at the MOTH Club in London. While the show was heavy on Nonagon Infinity material with the whole album being played, they did play other songs and one of them was a then unreleased and shortened version of the sprawling epic. This version features different lyrics than the final version, a trait which continues in the following performances. Days later on 2016-08-31 a new chorus lyric is heard being tried. On 2016-09-01 we can hear a few unique phrases. Instead of “water’s rising up, thick and green” we have “ocean’s rising up, thick and green.” Moving into the first chorus, Stu sings “look upon our history, crumbling castle, you cannot seem to believe, crumbling castle.” The second features the line “look upon our condition, crumbling castle, this is surely what we’ve become, crumbling castle.” Another interesting detail is that at this point the second verse did not exist and was instead the first verse repeated again. Around these unused lyrics are different intros and outros somewhat reminiscent of the studio ending. As the days go on lyrics are replaced at each show but the only lines in contention seemed to be during the choruses. 2016-09-06 features the line “look upon our history, crumbling castle, you would not believe what you see, crumbling castle.” A few months later on 2016-9-8 there was “look upon our history, crumbling castle, you could not believe where I’ve been, crumbling castle” and “look upon our extinction, crumbling castle, you would not believe where I’m from, crumbling castle.” It seems that for some reason that part of the song was hard to get right. The song disappeared from sets in late 2016 though the band was still working on it.
In the behind-the-scenes video for Murder of the Universe titled A BRIEF HISTORY OF PLANET EARTH you can spot writing on the wall detailing “Crumbling Castle.” At that point in the song’s history it was split into two parts with a third part being labeled “Crumbling Castle Part 2 Keep.” The song sits directly under “The Lord of Lightning” and “The Balrog” — showing that the song was initially meant for Murder of the Universe. Later in the video the song is written out again, this time as an intro and three different parts. Here it is sandwiched between “The Tale of the Altered Beast” and “The Lord of Lightning vs Balrog.” All of this said, “Crumbling Castle” never made it to the album due to it not fitting the record. In an interview with Guitar World, Stu said “This was the hardest song that we’d ever made. It came about when we were making Murder Of The Universe, and it started off as this more metal-ish, heavy track, but it just felt like it had this rhythmic depth to it. We were doing this polyrhythm thing where the bass and drums are in one groove and the guitars and vocals are sitting in another pocket, and it just kept pulling away from that record and saying ‘I don’t belong here, I’ve got this other vibe going on’. So that song was left off that record, and it kept developing, morphing. I think we recorded four or five different versions of it before it felt done. It was a super challenging song, and we were still learning how to mess around with these types of music.”
On April 3rd of 2017, a Facebook account named “Blinky Bill” had linked to five demos on a playlist titled “Polygondwanaland” in a King Gizzard fan group. In this batch of demos was “Crumbling Castle (Parts I,II+III)” — a purely instrumental version of the song spanning nine minutes and twenty five seconds. Compared to other demos (even from Polygondwanaland such as “Horology”) this early version is close to the final version though there are a few key differences. The hammer-on riff at 2:28 (2:11 on Polygondwanaland) goes for four bars rather than three and doesn’t end with the usual break. The “freak out” part at the end of the song is there but played calmly. The song ends differently than its studio counterpart as well, with the band bringing back the four chords heard before “I don’t want to fall into dust.” Outside of the structural changes the tempo is slower, making for a much more relaxing version of the song.
The studio version of the track would be recorded at Tender Trap Studios in Northcote by Ryan K. Brennan alongside “The Fourth Colour.” Polygondwanaland was released on November 17th, 2017 as a free download for fans to publish, remix and use for their own projects. “Crumbling Castle” served as both its opener and its longest track clocking in at ten minutes and forty four seconds. The song’s seventh verse would be referenced on the album’s cover.
A music video for the song by Jason Galea was released on October 18th, 2017. Unlike other videos from that year, it was composed entirely of analog VFX and animation. When uploaded to Facebook, the band added a cryptic passage. This ended up being alternate lyrics to the Murder of the Universe track “Han-Tyumi, the Confused Cyborg.” “Crumbling Castle” was the only video released for Polygondwanaland and was the last music video of 2017.
A day after the release of Polygondwanaland, the song would reappear at a live show at The Marquee in Brisbane. In November, the song’s “doom” outro was played following “Doom City” and since then it has not been played live. 2018 was a good year for the song as it was played at a majority of the shows. It was also that year when the band began to use the song as the start of a medley of songs mainly from Polygondwanaland. Early in the year the song was part of a two song combo with “The Fourth Colour” which bypassed the outro entirely. Starting around 2018-05-24 it would become part of a long medley of “Crumbling Castle” > “The Fourth Colour” > “Deserted Dunes Welcome Weary Feet” > “The Castle In the Air” > “Muddy Water.” This incarnation was played throughout the second half of 2018. The song’s outro was thrown out completely by this point but would make some appearances at the end of “Doom City.” Two 2018 performances (2024-08-04 and 2018-08-12 respectively) would appear in the videos ПАДАЮЩИЙ СНЕГ and THE NONAGON MOVIE.
The song began to appear less in 2019 as the band’s setlists were given more variety but the song continued to stand. The two variations on the medley were played throughout the year but it also saw appearances as a standalone track (with intro) such as 2019-10-05 (later released as Live in London ‘19). The song would also appear at the beginning of the band’s short film RATTY. The song was played twice in 2020 before the pandemic and wouldn’t return until 2022-04-27 as the show’s closer. The song, now being exclusively played with intro, was a standalone track until the marathon show at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, CA on 2022-10-02 where it was paired with “The Fourth Colour” once again. The song has mostly been played as part of this duo since then though an unusual “Crumbling Castle” > “Witchcraft” from 2024-03-24 shows that even this sacred rule can be broken. “Crumbling Castle” appeared as one of a few King Gizzard songs played at Cavs’ first drum seminar on September 21st, 2022. In 2019 when asked what the hardest song to pull off live was, Lucas said that “Crumbling Castle took ages to master.” A year later, Cavs mentioned that it's one of his favorites to play.