King Gizzard Love Thrash and Don’t Care if You Download

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard came back this year with a new record, PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation. The album is thrashy as hell, and in a recent YouTube interview, they spilled their guts about their love of thrash, as well as some other talking points.

“It’s very fun. It feels like the gut instinct [for] music we were always meant to make, so it feels good to go back there,” Vocalist and guitarist Stu Mackenzie says. Vocalist and guitarist Joey Walker adds that thrash metal is “the thing that we usually come back to.”

The band also talked about why, ironically unlike the kings of thrash themselves, Metallica, who were known for cracking down on bootleggers, they are just fine with illegal versions of their music.

Mackenzie says:

“I just think everything in the world should be free [laughs]. It just lets people do cool stuff. Music’s art, let people make art… We got enough money to eat. It’s not a complicated equation, [we just think that music] should be free.

Walker adds:

“It cultivates people being invested in the band, [aside from] just liking the music. If they feel like they can be involved on a different level, that’s really special.”

As the band continue to gain mainstream popularity, they seem determined to hold onto their DIY and metal ethos.