King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have announced Alien Metal, a hard electronic album that will become the prolific Melbourne band’s 28th studio LP and mark one of the sharpest stylistic turns in its restless catalogue.The record is due later this summer through the band’s p label, though no exact release date has been set. Its lead single, Level 5, arrived with a video directed by Hayden Somerville, giving fans the first full studio glimpse of a project shaped by modular synthesis, rave culture and the group’s long-running appetite for reinvention.
Alien Metal follows Phantom Island, the band’s 2025 orchestral-rock album, and pushes further away from guitar-centred psych rock into techno, hardcore, house and jungle-inflected territory. The new project has been described as the band’s first full-length hard electronic work, built around the energy of its rave shows and the modular synthesiser system the group took on the road under the nickname Nathan.
The album’s track list runs to eight songs: Sapience, Alien Metal, Superheavy, Supercritical, Kill For The Steel, Level 5, Rapid Alpha Decay, Uqt and Atomic Collapse. Rather than presenting electronic music as a side experiment, the set appears positioned as a central entry in the band’s discography, following earlier synth-heavy explorations on The Silver Cord in 2023.
Stu Mackenzie has framed the record as a major reset in the group’s creative process. He said the Eurorack synthesiser format “completely rewired” his brain after fellow band member Joey Walker, described within the group as its techno head, pushed him towards the sound. Mackenzie said he felt compelled to “forget everything” he knew about music and relearn it from scratch.
The process was unusually demanding even by King Gizzard’s standards. Mackenzie said the band had never discarded so much material for one album, with complete directions and bodies of work abandoned before the final shape emerged. That account fits the group’s history of rapid movement across styles, but also suggests Alien Metal was less a quick genre exercise than a prolonged attempt to find a durable identity within electronic music.
The breakthrough came through a late-night improvisation session that lasted more than an hour. The final album grew out of that jam, with each track developing from the same source performance. That method keeps the project aligned with the band’s live-driven approach, even as guitars move into the background and pulse, texture and sequencing become the main architecture.
Level 5 signals a tighter focus on rhythm than some of the band’s earlier electronic work. The track places distorted textures and machine-like propulsion at the front, while retaining enough of King Gizzard’s psychedelic sensibility to connect it to the wider catalogue. The video extends that change in tone, presenting the single as a statement of intent rather than a novelty detour.
The announcement also strengthens the band’s 2026 live strategy. King Gizzard are scheduled to play Field Of Vision II in Buena Vista, Colorado, from August 14 to 16, followed by shows at Forest Hills Stadium in New York on August 20 and 21. A rave show is set for Forest Hills on August 22, with another announced for Brooklyn’s Under The K Bridge Park on August 23 with. VRIL.
Those dates are limited compared with the band’s heavier touring cycles, but they give Alien Metal a clear stage platform. The shift matters because King Gizzard have built much of their reputation on translating ambitious studio concepts into unpredictable live performances, often allowing songs to mutate across tours, bootlegs and fan recordings.
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