3 out of 5

Label: KGLW

Produced by: Stu Mackenzie

Ten years from now, assuming King Gizzard maintains even a fraction of the frequency of their current output, we’ll likely be able to look back and break things out into relative phases. These won’t be traditional genre phases – experimentation has been part of the band’s DNA from the start – but maybe just chunks of time where their motivations produced greater or lesser albums.

And maybe – likely – I’ll be proven wrong, but I’m seeing The Silver Chord as Gizzard’s jump-the-shark moment, at least for this particular phase. I’ve admittedly fallen off with the band a bit, and perhaps partially due to exhaustion, but then I go back and listen to some “classic” Gizz (y’know, five minutes and twenty albums ago), and it really felt like the fire was just burning differently. The last few releases in 2022 / 2023, while not without some impressive highlights, have leaned more towards templates into which Stu’s ecological sci-fi lyrics are inserted, and then an occasional track where he goes “Whoo!”

Silver Chord, a non-guitar, synth-based album, has its moments, but moreso than ever before… it doesn’t. We’ve tipped so far into genre experimentation over content that it comes across as shtick; even the template is suppressed behind the disco beats and cringy rapping. And lest I seem too limited in my allowance for such changeups, the vinyl release suggests some awareness of this, as its straight-up club numbers are stored behind locked grooves on each LP side – like a cheeky grin that admits that the band isn’t necessarily all-in on the enterprise this time.

Where I do realize I’m being limited is in my expectations of quality: if this were a new band, while it’s not really my bag, it’s an admittedly fun blend of kraut guitar stomps and bursts of drum programming. The rapping is still dumb, but I appreciate the attempted changeups in vocal delivery and tone.

So we’ll balance out here: as a KG release, I hope it’s the pinnacle of this era of showmanship, and things reformulate hereafter – there’s not really a single song on here that necessitates repeating (meaning the extended mixes, which I checked out digitally, don’t help things much). As a random release, it’s an acceptable lark: weightless, gets your toe-tapping, makes your eyes roll while you’re kind of grinning at the kitsch. It’s rather hollow either way, but that’s less offensive if you have no stakes in the band besides.