The seventh song on Nonagon Infinity is an existential jam in 7/8 time, where Stu explains the facts of the universe — or at least the universe of the band’s music — as a machine altered by a powerful, all-knowing being, capable of changing it at whim. Paired with the fast, heavy yet complicated music, “Invisible Face” is a bit of a head scratcher. Yet it’s also a head scratcher for a few other reasons. While other Nonagon Infinity songs would be played throughout the years following its release, this track was dropped only a year after it was released, only to be dusted off years later. A majority of its early performances were incomplete. Despite this it got an entire music video which was released a whole year after the album’s promotional phase. What exactly happened here? Truth is, we don’t know, but here’s the rundown:
Like many Gizzard tunes, “Invisible Face” was an instrumental early in its life. The one existing demo of the song (found on Demos Vol. 6: Music To Burn Money To) features the main riff played on piano and backed by drums, with other piano parts laid over it. The song’s middle section is absent from the demo as it stays on the main riff throughout. While most Nonagon Infinity songs were mainly recorded at one studio with vocals recorded by Michael Badger, “Invisible Face” was split between Daptone Records in Brooklyn and A Secret Location in Melbourne (recorded by Wayne Gordon and Paul Maybury respectively). According to an article for Audio Technology the jazzy part of the song was done at A Secret Location with the main song presumably being a Daptone piece. The track was released on Nonagon Infinity released on April 29th, 2016. The melody of “Invisible Face” is prominently featured in “Evil Death Roll” at the 4:01 mark with a change in pronoun (“I distort the notion of the place” is “you distort the notion of the place” instead). “Invisible Face” also quotes “Wah Wah” before transitioning into the song proper.
Despite being a more obscure Nonagon track, “Invisible Face” was given a music video which was released on July 14th, 2017, announced by the band tweeting a photo of it being uploaded to YouTube. It shows a team of seven cloaked men (as seen in the “Gamma Knife” and “People-Vultures” videos) flying through space with an alligator. They land on a planet and are hypnotized. The gator climbs the stalk of a strange plant and merges with it. This creates the egg previously seen in the music video for “People-Vultures.” As strange, alien plants begin to grow around the men, we cut to footage of the band sleeping, walking and drinking a red liquid from a giant jar. The film then cuts back to the animation where the crew is falling through space before cutting to a tease of the next song, “Wah Wah.” The video was created by a two-person team of Jason Galea and Joel Melrose with 16mm footage from Samuel Kristofski. While Galea edited and animated the video, Melrose was the one behind the illustrations. The video was a part of the band’s Nonagon Infinity film project which never saw completion. Unlike the rest of the videos in the series, “Invisible Face" was released a whole year later between Murder of the Universe and Sketches of Brunswick East, making it the final Nonagon Infinity music video.
The live history of “Invisible Face” is a bit more strange than most songs in Gizzard’s repertoire. The earliest known performance was on 2016-5-9 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. In these days the song was often a stepping stone into “The River” and was shorter, only going up to the first chorus at around a minute in length. There’s currently no proof that the song was played in its entirety during this time. To make matters worse, many live tapes accidentally mark the song as part of the setlist even though what is being noted is its tease in “Evil Death Roll.”
That all said, the band found the idea of playing the song in its entirety interesting. In a Reddit AMA from May of 2022 Stu mentioned that it would be a good idea to play the song live and a year later “Invisible Face” made its true debut at The Salt Shed in Chicago, Illinois on 2023-6-12. This version of the song features the entire composition with its middle section being extended into a jam. After the final verse the song transitioned into “Wah Wah” and “Road Train” the same way it does on the album. It would be played one more time at Remlinger Farms on 2023-06-18 as part of a suite of “Invisible Face” > “Wah Wah” > “The River” > “Wah Wah” > “The River.”