From the first seconds of this song it’s clear that Nonagon Infinity is going to send you on a trip. A mythical proclamation is our greeting: “Nonagon Infinity opens the door, wait for the answer to open the door…” You are then plummeted into a brash jam, both heavy and mind-bending, before meeting a strange depiction of a touring band. They loosen up to fuck shit up on stage. It’s energetic and exciting but also incredibly tiring. The lyrics explain that exasperation through images of overworked bodies that might as well be put into robot ones unable to feel pain or drowsiness. The band does it all for the “weirdo swarm,” and their music serves as a way to escape. It’s a recognition of their success as well as their lifestyle. Stu described the song to ATO Records in March of 2016. “That song’s about feeling overworked, like a bit of a robot that’s just going to crash and die or something but you get yourself up and do it again and you robot on and you’re alright. It was one of the early ones we wrote for the record, and I think when that song came together, everybody started to feel like we’re going to actually be able to pull off this never-ending album idea.”
It features a few firsts for the band. As the opener of Nonagon Infinity, it’s the first song to mention the iconic title. It's also the first King Gizzard songs to feature a microtonal guitar — an element that would be a defining trait for the band going forward and a central feature of their next album Flying Microtonal Banana. Joey has also mentioned that it was one of the first times the band built a song around an odd time signature in a way that became a core feature to the album, something which defines releases like Polygondwanaland and PetroDragonic Apocalypse.
Like the songs that follow it on Nonagon Infinity, “Robot Stop” is self-referential. At the 3:29 mark Stu plays the riff of “Big Fig Wasp” which is followed by the main motif of “Hot Water” from I’m In Your Mind Fuzz at 3:59. Motifs from “Robot Stop” also reappear in “Big Fig Wasp” and “Evil Death Roll”. To fit in with the album’s looping context, the album’s closer “Road Train” wraps around into “Robot Stop” during its final moments. In five minutes “Robot Stop” sets up a world of chaos that the album will explore and just might “open the door” to the band behind the music. When fans talk about classic, if not definitive, King Gizzard songs, it’s impossible not to mention “Robot Stop.”
The earliest performance of “Robot Stop” was on 2015-6-12 at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. In the early days “Robot Stop” featured different lyrics which were relatively hard to make out and at least somewhat improvised on the spot. This is most noticeable during their shows at the Happy Dog in Cleveland on 2015-6-14 and 2015-6-15 where you can hear Stu change the phrases in the verses (note the addition of “fuck shit up” on the 15th). The robotic theming of the final song doesn’t appear in these versions, instead focusing on hard work (for example the Bonnaroo performance features the lyrics “your brother works I know, he’s just the same I know”). Even the phrase “Nonagon Infinity” was not around at the time, in its place a phrase that seems to be “heavenly scene.” Even the song’s tempo changed throughout the months with versions of the song from June being noticeably slower than their September counterparts. The title was up in the air early on, as on 2015-6-15 Stu says that the song has a working title of “New New Song.” “Robot Stop”’s connection to “Hot Water was also forming at this time as various performances saw the songs combine together into one cohesive piece. 2015 renditions of “Robot Stop” can be heard multiple times in Jason Galea’s documentary BOOTLEG HOLIDAY FROM HELL.
By 2016-02-15 the song had been formed into what is known today, and recorded at Daptone Records in Brooklyn by Wayne Gordon with vocals recorded by Michael Badger in his bungalow. In an interview with Audio Technology, Stu reveals that his vocals were run through the Little Alterboy plugin. The song would be teased as part of their upcoming looping album Nonagon Infinity, which was released on April 29th, 2016. On vinyl copies, the song is given its own unique mix with the end of “Road Train” at the beginning of the track. The song would later be used to promote the band’s festival Gizzfest with Jason Galea filming a performance of the song.
On August 8th, 2016, a music video for the song was released on YouTube. Created by Jason Galea, the video was made in Cinema 4D with effects added in After Effects. It utilizes a limited color scheme of red, yellow, black and white and shows a wide array of mechanical devices, gears, displays, and robots while occasionally showing the face of Stu singing the song. Towards the end of the video, a swarm of mechanical wasps are shown awakening a giant wasp who is grabbed by another robot (later identified as Han-Tyumi) and decapitated. To take an eye for an eye however, the robotic wasp shoots saw blades out of its eyes which cut its attacker’s arms and head off.
Galea cited H.R. Giger, Heavy Metal magazine, Transformers: The Movie and more as influences on the video. “Robot Stop” features two firsts for the band as it marks the debut of the cyborg Han-Tyumi who would be properly introduced two albums later on Murder of the Universe as well as the first use of Stu’s Flying Microtonal Banana in any Gizzard media (here depicted as a mechanical bug). That said this was not the first use of the guitar as it could be found in Galea’s 2015 music video for the GUM song “Anesthetized Lesson.”
Like all music videos from Nonagon Infinity, “Robot Stop” was meant to be a part of a Nonagon Infinity film that would have been made up of videos for each song. This idea was never realized, making “Robot Stop” one of the four completed segments.
In the years following the music video’s release its imagery has reappeared at different times. Of course Han-Tyumi would become iconic for the band, but the video has also seen some other references since then, for example on the posters for 2019-08-13 and 2019-10-13. While Nonagon videos from 2016 were often accompanied by a single, “Robot Stop” did not receive one. That said, we know that the band was most likely planning one as Jason Galea had created a cover for a “Robot Stop” single and uploaded it to his old website.
In a live setting the song has seen some changes over the years. In 2016 the song was played relatively straight with no major changes outside of missing the microtonal guitar. The song would often serve as the set opener and would transition into “Big Fig Wasp.” Other times the song would veer into “Hot Water” before going back into “Robot Stop” proper. In the summer of 2016 some shows revolved around the looping concept of Nonagon Infinity and featured a reprise of “Robot Stop” at the end of the show. In 2017 the song began to take a back seat, appearing towards the middle and end of sets and setting up tracks like “Gamma Knife” and “Hot Water.” Around this time the band would begin to incorporate teases of Hawkwind’s “Master of the Universe” into the track (see 2017-9-27 before “Hot Water”) which would continue into 2018 where the song would become the start of Nonagon medleys that would close the shows. The version of the song from 2018-08-19 would appear in THE NONAGON MOVIE.
Setlists became more unpredictable by 2019, meaning that “Robot Stop” could appear anywhere (including the documentary RATTY) but the song was still played close to the album. After the COVID-19 pandemic, the band would enter their jammy phase and “Robot Stop” was not immune. The song was given a longer intro and outro which pushed it over the seven-minute mark (such as on 2022-06-17) and it has gotten longer since, with some reaching a little over fifteen minutes in length (2023-06-07). In the end, “Robot Stop” is one of the band’s most played songs.