King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard at Forest Hills Stadium [night 2, pics/review]

Photos + Article by Will Oliver

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard recently rreturned to Forest Hills Stadium for a pair of special three-hour marathon sets where they would repeat no song between the two nights. We caught the night two performance on August 17th, which was sold out.

The show came in support of their newly released 26th album (!!), Flight b741, which came out on August 9th via their their new label, P(doom) Records.

With the unique nature of this particular run of shows and the bands insanely prolific discography, the band ended up playing only three songs from the new record, having so much sheer music to choose from. Any show other than the first of a no repeats run is always interesting, as you go in knowing a handful of your favorite songs were already played. But it so often opens up the possibilities for a wide array of rare cuts and oddities for the band to explore than one may not normally get.

This is exactly what we got that night at Forest Hills, as the band treated fans to a diverse set of songs from throughout their discography, opting for a handful of their heavier metal-leaning material from Murder of the Universe and PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation. Like so many, I discovered the band during the I’m in Your Mind Fuzz era, so it was cool to get to hear them open with “Hot Water” and also dive into “Slow Jam 1” and “Am I in Heaven?”

The packed Forest Hills Stadium of adoring fans gave off cult status reminiscent of bands like The Grateful Dead. The band were clear to share their amazement at playing at such a beautiful venue to so many people, with one of the best moments of the show coming during their performance of “Billabong Valley” which saw Ambrose Kenny-Smith borrow a fans inflatable gator as he climbed on it and crowdsurfed on.

Stu Mackenzie and the rest of the band were as locked in and tight as I have ever seen them, so effortlessly shifting gears into the many arenas of the bands sonic territory, delivering a three hour set that will go down as the stuff of legend for their adoring fans.