King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, the Australian rock band, have just released a new song called “Some of Us.” Along with the song comes a music video featuring the band rocking out, a hot shower and a thermal camera stuck on the warm end of the spectrum.

The song sounds like a followup to their last single, “Honey,” since both tracks draw a clear influence from the Anatolian style of rock guitar playing. While Honey remained on the folkier side of the scale, “Some of Us” is full-electric guitar playing with microtonal tuning. Both Anatolian and microtonal influences have been absent since 2017’s Flying Microtonal Banana, the first of five full-length studio albums the group released that year.

Since then, the band has also dabbled in narrated garage rock, jazz-rock, and psychedelic pop. Their most recent album, Infest the Rat’s Nest, from about a year ago, captured a try at full-on stoner metal. 

According to a tweet from the band, guitarist Cook “Cookie” Craig and multi-instrumentalist Stu Mackenzie are responsible for the tune. “This Cookie penned, Stu sung song came together early this year as the world was slowly descending into madness, but before it was truly on fire. Can’t wait to show y’all some more tunes before we go down in flames. XOXOX”

John Angus Stewart, director of the music video, was aiming for an apocalyptic vibe. The reds, oranges and yellows of the thermal camera set the scene on fire and the shower water resembles blood. The lyrics also fit into this vision of the beginning of the end, as seen for example in the hook, “Some, some of us see/Some, some of us don’t/Assured everything turns into dust.” 

King Gizzard haven’t announced any 2020 studio albums yet, but they released four live albums earlier this year and kept trying to play more shows sooner before settling on the 2021 dates seen here. Three of the live albums were for Australian bushfire relief, and the other called Chunky Shrapnel was the soundtrack to a short-lived concert film.

Photo credit: Mauricio Alvarado