King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard fans crossing their fingers for a nearly 10-minute thrash metal song about a murderous giant lizard and featuring Latin chanting are in luck. “Dragon,” the latest pre-release track from the group’s upcoming album PetroDragonic Apocalypse, is out today, accompanied by a video from unofficial seventh member Jason Galea.
“Over the last two months, I dusted off my music video computer to slay the 10-minute ‘Dragon,’” he says. “I wanted to explore a harsh distorted visual palette using my live visual setup mixed with PS1 cutscene-inspired animation and studio footage I filmed of the band. The animation was created using Cinema 4D and processed through After Effects and a Tachyons circuit bent video unit.”
In the clip, band members are seen rocking out in close quarters while dressed in Motorhead and Black Sabbath t-shirts, giving a clear hint as to some of the new album’s hard rock inspirations. All the while, frontman Stu Mackenzie details the seemingly unstoppable titular dragon as it lays waste to the planet: “A creature born of the tempest / the thrill of the hunt / the thrill of the quest / a wild being of chaos and fire / knowing naught but its own desire.”
“There might be, like, 20 different parts that ended up on it, but in the beginning, there might have been 100 different parts,” Mackenzie tells SPIN of “Dragon,” which, like all the material on PetroDragonic Apocalypse, was assembled after the fact from a day-long jam. “Even whittling it down to the 20 is quite a big task. Then, you’ve got to get your head around those 20. Which one can transition into which other one? It very much had to be one at a time, and that’s the way all the songs came together: one at a time.”
King Gizzard kicked off its summer U.S. residency tour over the weekend at the Caverns in rural Pelham, Tn., and will play four shows this week at Red Rocks outside Denver. PetroDragonic Apocalypse is due June 16, five days before the band’s biggest U.S. show to date at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
