The stats on King Gizzard’s colourful career are stacking up fast: 25 albums, 13 of them charting in the Top 20 in Australia, where they are now arguably the country’s most innovative, important and productive rock band. International critical acclaim. Headline festival appearances. And perhaps most importantly, a fervent worldwide fanbase who share endless memes, mixes, videos, graphics, theories and discussions, all through which they explore and expand what they have termed ‘The Gizzverse’.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are: Stu Mackenzie (vocals/guitar), Ambrose Kenny-Smith (harmonica/vocals/keyboards), Cook Craig (guitar/vocals), Joey Walker (guitar/vocals), Lucas Harwood (bass) and Michael Cavanagh (drums).

Album discography: 12 Bar Bruise (2012), Eyes Like the Sky (2013), Float Along – Fill Your Lungs (2013), Oddments (2014), I’m In Your Mind Fuzz (2014), Quarters! (2015), Paper Mache Dream Balloon (2015), Nonagon Infinity (2016), Flying Microtonal Banana (2017), Murder of the Universe (2017), Sketches of Brunswick East (2017), Polygondwanaland (2017), Gumboot Soup (2017), Fishing for Fishies (2019), Infest The Rats’ Nest (2019), Chunky Shrapnel (live album) (2020), K.G. (2020), L.W. (2021), Butterfly 3000 (2021), Butterfly 3001 (2022), Made in Timeland (2022), Omnium Gatherum (2022), Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava (2022), Laminated Denim (2022), Changes (2022), and PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation (2023), The Silver Cord (2023)

On a practical level, Geese are still the group we were introduced to in 2021: vocalist Cameron Winter, guitarist Gus Green, guitarist Foster Hudson, bassist Dom DiGesu, and drummer Max Bassin. But spiritually, Geese have returned as an entirely different prospect. Their new album 3D Country is the sound of a restless, adventurous band redefining themselves.

Anyone who has seen Geese live recently might’ve noticed the band adopted a different vibe onstage — more of a volcanic, unpredictable aesthetic. It turns out that wasn’t a flipside to the recordings of Projector, but foreshadowing that there was more to the story. Knowing they were now beyond teenage basement experiments and were instead making something for an audience who would hear it, Geese felt emboldened. “When we were writing Projector it was about narrowing the scope, trying to do more with less,” Green says. “When we started writing for 3D Country we were trying to do a lot more and seeing what worked and what didn’t.”

While writing 3D Country, Winter was preoccupied with “modern doom,” the way climate change and all manner of looming catastrophes hang on the horizon while we otherwise go about our lives. “It’s about living in spite of just total ambient dread,” he explains. “I wanted to adopt an irreverent, sarcastic way of looking at that.” While Winter wanted to portray a generational experience, he didn’t want to be overly literal or didactic about it. “At this point, everybody I know is already so cynical and defeatist about the state of things, it’s actually hilarious,” he explains. “Younger people make jokes out of the fact that human extinction is on the horizon, and that’s kind of beautiful. I tried to represent that attitude.”

With a heightened ambition fueling 3D Country, the band created a bugged-out, wild, unpredictable ride — an almost phantasmagoric reflection of contemporary life. “It feels like going to the circus and instead of having a good time, everyone is trying to kill you,” Bassin says.

And even if 3D Country is one more stop and not the final destination — Winter hints that what comes next could be just as severe a change — the album makes one thing very clear about Geese. This is not the band we thought they were, and no one can say where they might take us next.