Words by TimelandIsWacky
It’s your unborn self.
At the 2013 Carlton Dry Independent Music Awards, King Gizzard won the inaugural Global Music Grant. The band was given $50,000 to further their career and the band used the money to fly to America to not just tour, but to record. While the band’s reputation in Australia included their outrageous live sets, especially in their formative years, their time in America would cement a heavy psychedelic rock strain in their DNA. The band’s two drummers paired with the screeching guitars and peculiar stage antics of its frontman would create a must-see show in every city they went to. The live shows, more specifically the energy of them, inspired their creativity. One idea stood out in particular though. What if they could make an album without breaks? Each song on the album would transition seamlessly into the one after it, creating one massive suite that felt like a cohesive whole. The band initially attempted this with 2014’s I’m In Your Mind Fuzz but ended up going down a different path, with some of the material that best suited the concept going unused. Elements of this still remain on the album, notably its opening suite which centers on one bass line and a largely static tempo, as well as the use of motifs throughout its ten songs, but the band saved the idea for a later date. They would go on to record a jazzy album with four songs at ten minutes and ten seconds in length, fittingly titled Quarters!, in late 2014. When the time came to pitch their next project, the concept of a never-ending album returned, and somewhere along the way it changed its scope. What if it looped forever? The final song would link back to the first and everything would start over again. King Gizzard was not the first band to think of this. Pink Floyd’s rock opera The Wall loops to demonstrate the cyclical themes of the album (fear leads to isolation, isolation leads to hate, hate leads to fear), while J Dilla’s magnum opus Donuts is an album built around sample loops that ends right where it begins. What set this project apart was its sound. The band was diving through the 1970s and finding multiple inspirations. Hawkwind and other heavy acts rooted the project in distortion and volume while the Anatolian rock scene of that decade would give it some lighter psychedelia and a number of odd time signatures and microtones. The band was looking to create the most intense album in their discography, and one that would have a level of continuity that well exceeded I’m In Your Mind Fuzz.
Some material was brought to the studio in February of 2015 with songs getting debuted as early as May. “Gamma Knife” was a jaunty rocker with blaring harmonica and a drum solo, “Robot Stop” was a heavy Hawkwind-inspired track, and “Evil Devil” was a sinister garage rock tune with a heavy emphasis on wah wah (this would later be reformed into “Evil Death Roll”). The material was darker than anything before, and the songwriting only differentiated the material more with stream-of-consciousness lyrics about death and work. The following months would see more new material appear including the then space-themed “Wah Wah” and a nonsensical but exciting track called “People-Vultures.” There was a level of intentionality to the material with motifs carrying between songs while a certain phrase was heard repeatedly. It’s hard to make out in recordings from the time but it appears to be “heavenly scene.” The cohesion made it clear, even in this early form, that this project was something special.
While the songs continued to take shape on tour, it was clear to the band that the songs weren’t in good enough shape to record. At the same time, the band was also getting burnt out and was sick of “intellectualising” the material. They would continue to hone these songs live but would set the material aside in the studio, instead picking up their acoustic instruments and recording Paper Mâché Dream Balloon. While the album was another stylistic departure for them with its folk roots, it’s not a complicated album to parse thematically or musically, and that was intentional. “Sometimes I just feel like you can spend so much time thinking about music, and not actually doing it, and that’s bad. I was a bit bogged down in that world, and that’s where this record came up – a bunch of songs that are just songs, and they’re not meant to be related to some overall conceptual thing or anything – they’re just a collection of tracks.” Paper Mâché provided King Gizzard the break they needed to get back in focus, and they returned to the studio and got more material on tape. At the same time, other songs formed such as the mysterious and unreleased “High School.” By December of 2015 the album had been shaped into what we know today. They would reveal the name of their album during a Reddit AMA that month: Nonagon Infinity.
Nonagon Infinity was released on April 29th, 2016, to praise from both critics and fans. Stuart Berman of Pitchfork would give the album an 8.0, saying that the album “yields some of the most outrageous, exhilarating rock ‘n’ roll in recent memory.” Anthony Fantano gave the album an 8 as well, celebrating its ingenuity and the band’s performances. All Things Loud’s Jack Parker gave it a 10/10 while praising its ambitious concept. Mike Katzif of NPR conceded the album wasn’t for everyone, but compared it to the involved experiences of the Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka or watching The Wizard of Oz with The Dark Side of the Moon. The album would see acclaim even outside of the world of music, with director Edgar Wright calling it one of his favorite albums of all time. Nonagon would go on to win multiple awards, including Best Album at the 2016 Music Victoria Awards and Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Album at the ARIAs. The latter of these wins would result in a short-lived controversy as metalheads voiced their disapproval due to the album not being heavy enough for the category. Controversy aside, the album was a breakout success further establishing their name in the independent rock scene, and there’s not much ambiguity as to why. It speaks for itself.
The album is a peek into an apocalyptic world inhabited by vultures, demons, wasps, crocodiles, and Max Max-esque semi-truck caravans. It’s a setting defined by its violence and chaos, and that dysfunction permeates each song on the album in its own way. Both the smallest creatures and the universe itself are out to tear you apart. The world takes notes from dark fantasy and sci-fi settings with Stu singling out Dune as an inspiration. Yet beyond the gruesome fantasy is a level of realism inspired by the band’s time on the road. That inspiration is apparent from the start with “Robot Stop” and its lyrics about feeling overworked yet persevering to satiate the audience, but that influence also appears in subtler ways. “People-Vultures” was inspired by the audience at a show, “Road Train” feels like an exaggeration of the touring life, and “Mr. Beat” is based around some musical wordplay. This mix of influences from dystopian stories and real experiences culminates in an unreality where the band coexists with autonomous robots, which Stu described as “a world you’re thrown into which links up to reality but doesn’t necessarily.” While Gizzard had dabbled in fiction prior to this (notably on Eyes Like the Sky, another album that blends reality with fantasy) Nonagon demonstrated a shift in themes that would be built upon with their following albums. “We wanted to build a landscape, or a world. It's not like a narrative. There's no storyline. It's a landscape and you're inside it and you can look around 360 [degrees] and in every direction there's some other feature…"
While the worldbuilding is fascinating in its own right, perhaps the greatest hook of Nonagon is the music. Stu said that he “wanted to have an album where all these riffs and grooves just kept coming in and out the whole time, so a song wasn’t just a song, it was part of a loop, part of this whole experience where it feels like it doesn’t end and doesn’t need to end.” Each song contains callbacks and references to other songs on the album. For example, “Robot Stop” invokes “Big Fig Wasp” during its bridge, while “Big Fig Wasp,” “Evil Death Roll,” and “Road Train” all call back to "Robot Stop." These references are not just limited to Nonagon however, as “Hot Water” and “Lonely Steel Sheet Flyer” appear in “Robot Stop” and “Road Train” respectively. While each song stands on its own, it also fits as part of Nonagon as a whole, reinforcing the worldbuilding present in the lyrics. Beyond this, the band’s exploration of ‘70s hard rock gave the album a flavor that fans knew from live shows but not necessarily from the albums, while the splashes of Anatolian rock give it something to distinguish itself from the bands that inspired it. The use of zurna on “Wah Wah” and the introduction of microtones on “Robot Stop” display the album’s Turkish inspiration clearly, something which will be built on with the next entry in their discography. All of this is wrapped within the album’s momentum and energy. As soon as you press play, you’re immediately sucked in, and given the lack of big finales, it’s hard to turn it off. It’s addictive. Is there a Gizzard album that lends itself better to relistens than this one?
While the band was certainly one fire at the time, Jason Galea’s output defined the era while setting up the worldbuilding and experimentation of 2017. The first instance of a nonagon in his work was during the music video for “The River.” The shape is seen throughout the second section of the song to frame the multi-colored gators on the waterfall. As for Nonagon Infinity, he originally planned for the cover to center around vehicles, noting in a Reddit AMA that he envisioned either a truck impaled on a sword or a truckasaurus eating a fighter jet. The truck on the sword would end up being used for the band’s 2016 European tour while one could argue the truckosaurus idea would end up being the foundation for the “Dragon” music video. In the end, Galea settled on a painting of a barren wasteland with a mountain in the middle of the shot, all of which is framed by a satanic nonagon. Keen-eyed fans would recognize it as the location seen on the cover of I’m In Your Mind Fuzz, signalling the album’s roots while building the band’s universe further. This concept went through a few changes. Galea initially had icons to represent each song as part of the nonagon but this was scrapped, though the idea of representing each song would make its way to the back cover with the image for “Evil Death Roll” being the only icon brought over (albeit with a different colored background).
Nonagon Infinity was backed by four music videos from Jason Galea and company, spanning from before the album’s release to well into 2017. The first, “Gamma Knife,” was one of two videos done as a collaboration with Danny Cohen. It initially started as an ode to ‘70s television performances but went in a more Holy Mountain-like direction with the band members performing the song while older versions of themselves join together for a summoning ritual. “People-Vultures” was the second Cohen collaboration and follows the events of “Gamma Knife” with the band now formed into a towering cardboard vulture. This project was a massive effort that risked the band’s own safety, but the result was one of the most iconic videos the band has ever made. “Robot Stop” was the third video and is a journey throughout Nonagon’s chaotic world done entirely in red, yellow, black, and white with a pixelated style. It also stands as the introduction of Han-Tyumi, an iconic character who would be properly introduced the following year. It also marks the second appearance of the Flying Microtonal Banana, as it originally appeared in Galea's video for the GUM song “Anesthetized Lesson.” Like the videos before it, “Robot Stop” was a massive undertaking. It was created entirely in Cinema 4D and After Effects and required Galea to skip two entire tours to get it done. The final video was for “Invisible Face.” This video, done in collaboration with Joel Melrose and Samuel Kristofski, blended 2D animation showing the band’s elder selves from “Gamma Knife” traveling through space alongside footage of the band wandering in a field and drinking a mysterious red elixir.
These four videos have become some of their most beloved, with “People-Vultures” even gaining the title of Australian Video of the Year at the J Awards, though they were meant to be part of a larger vision. Galea had attempted to create a Nonagon Infinity movie made up of videos for each song, though he envisioned it as more of a longform music video with a loose narrative rather than a strict, planned out film. It was to be a massive project utilizing a number of collaborators and (presumably) different visual styles, but it never came to fruition. What the remaining videos would have been like is unclear but stills from the unfinished video for “Wah Wah” ended up being used for 2019-08-26’s show poster.
Gizz would tour to promote the album a day after it was released, starting with an appearance at Levitation Fest. The second performance at the fest on May 1st would be documented with the bootleg Live at Levitation ‘16. The band’s American tour cemented the Nonagon tracks as favorites, with “Robot Stop” becoming a reliably intense opener, “Gamma Knife” > “People-Vultures” being a rowdy stretch in the middle, and “Evil Death Roll” burning the house down towards the end. The recordings we have from these shows demonstrate the chaos that these songs brought to the table. The band would fly back to Australia for a number of shows from June to August before heading to the United Kingdom for another tour. This time, however, the band would hit a number of festivals. These sets would focus on Nonagon and featured a nearly complete performance of the album (barring the second half of “Invisible Face”) with a complete loop back to the album’s start. The recording of 2016-08-25 serves as essential listening for anyone getting into this era of the band. By October the band had returned to Australia for Gizzfest, which would tease what was to come in 2017.
The impact of Nonagon Infinity is something we still notice today. The band’s experimentation with microtones on “Robot Stop” would form the foundation of their next album Flying Microtonal Banana, which would further expand the band's experimentation in the years to come. This was followed by Murder of the Universe: a spiritual successor to Nonagon. In an interview with Time Out's Meg Crawford, Stu said that he felt the world that Nonagon took place in wasn't finished and that Murder was intended to flesh it out and give a new perspective on it. The album achieves this through multiple references to its predecessor, such as the reappearance of the “People-Vultures” riff in “Some Context,” the call-outs in “The Lord of Lightning,” and its album cover being the third and final appearance of the Mind Fuzz castle. When put together, we see the fortress go from inhabited and protected to buried and destroyed under a wave of vomit. The band’s narrative crafting and world building would only grow from there. It’s hard to envision the dystopia of PetroDragonic Apocalypse or the fantasy storytelling of Polygondwanaland if Nonagon hadn’t taken the first true step towards crafting the Gizzverse. Even going further than that, would they have dipped into thrash metal on Infest the Rats’ Nest if it weren’t for “Road Train?” Would they have created “Altered Beast II” if “Evil Death Roll”’s odd time signatures hadn’t set the stage? While the band was always experimenting with what their albums could be, Nonagon sent them down so many different paths, ones that they’re still exploring today. The album would also inspire other projects from Jason Galea. Murder of the Universe almost got its own film-like release with videos planned for the album’s three suites, though “The Tale of the Altered Beast” was never finished. The idea of a fully visualized album was realized with Butterfly 3000, which had ten different videos by eight artists total, similar to how the Nonagon film would have been created by many collaborators.
The songs from Nonagon still remain in rotation today, and fans have expressed their love in different ways, with multiple fan projects across different mediums: a website that looped the album until its domain expired, an abandoned but fun video game, an upcoming animated film... The music has even made it to popular shows and video games, notably being a prominent part of the ULTRA_REVAMP update for the game Ultrakill. While this slice of the Gizzverse is now ten years old, there’s no doubt that we’ll continue to come back to it to envelop ourselves in its world and get lost in all of its intricacies. The door stays open for the weirdo swarm, and it beckons:
Come on through the door, see…