These offbeat Australian rockers became stars — by breaking every music industry rule

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard released five studio albums this year, encouraged fan bootlegging and didn’t rely on TikTok.

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard at Red Rocks near Denver, Colorado.

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard started as a joke.

It was a party band that served as a side project for a gaggle of young, aspiring musicians in Melbourne. “We would play under a different name every night, just to kind of f..k with people and, like, be ­annoying,” says Stu Mackenzie, the band’s leader.

Now they’re one of the most talked-about bands in rock.

The quirky six-member group, whose adventurous sound veers from psychedelic rock to thrash metal to electronic pop and rap, had a breakout year in 2022. It released five studio albums, including the critical favourite Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava, and mounted a successful North American tour, culminating in their biggest-ever headlining show at a 13,000-­capacity tennis stadium in New York.

“We’re pretty much just a ­garage band that’s somehow tricked everyone,” says Ambrose Kenny-Smith, one of the group’s singers, who plays harmonica, keyboards and saxophone.

King Gizzard’s gradual ascent is in many ways the opposite of the rapid explosion of the viral TikTok star. Its success also speaks to today’s fragmented, niche-driven music business: music acts in genres from punk (Turnstile) to rap ($uicideboy$) are, like King Gizzard, building formidable touring businesses without the recognition of the pop-culture mainstream, which increasingly is the province of the few megastars everybody knows.

“We’ve never been the kind of band who really has the capacity to have radio singles, or to have crossover hits. We don’t do TikTok,” Mackenzie, 32, says. “We don’t exist within the Zeitgeist really … So I think the only option you really have is to just go and do your thing, and hope people dig it.”

Music executives say the band’s rise boils down to its unusually prodigious musical output; a highly unorthodox relationship with fans, whom they encourage to bootleg the group’s music and merchandise; and their increasingly unpredictable shows, which motivate fans to see multiple concerts instead of just one.

More than 28,000 fans saw King Gizzard’s recent three-night run at the legendary Red Rocks amphitheatre near Denver, where they performed for roughly nine hours in total without repeating a song. That’s a step up from eight years ago, when they were playing 2am shows at Brooklyn’s 250-seat Baby’s All Right club.

In 2019, King Gizzard sold out Washington DC’s 1200-capacity 9:30 Club; when they returned to the city late last year, they filled the 6000-capacity Anthem.

All told, it is estimated King Gizzard grossed about $US4.3m ($6.1m) on tour last year, up from about $US2m in 2019.

“King Gizzard are going to be playing in arenas soon,” says Peter Shapiro, one of the leading concert promoters in the jam-band scene. King Gizzard’s unconventional attack goes back to its roots as a joke band. Mackenzie and his bandmates, who include guitarist Joey Walker, were messing around, opening shows for friends. The only reason King Gizzard stuck as a name (it was Mackenzie’s idea) is because it was the first name to appear on a printed concert poster. “I still haven’t forgiven Stu,” Walker says. Kenny-Smith adds: “I don’t think he’s forgiven himself, either.”

Singer Ambrose Kenny-Smith. Picture: Getty Images

Over time, King Gizzard became known in rock circles for releasing music at a frantic clip, a practice common in hip-hop but still comparatively uncommon in other genres. Since forming in 2010, King Gizzard has released 23 studio albums, 14 live albums, five compilations of demos, two mini-albums or EPs, and one remix album. Three studio albums appeared in October alone.

Putting out so much music in varying styles keeps the band’s fans engaged while luring in new ones with fresh entry points. For example, Infest the Rats’ Nest, the band’s 2019 thrash-metal album, brought many fans of heavier music into the King Gizzard universe. One of last year’s albums, Omnium Gatherum, includes songs with Kenny-Smith rapping. (Hip-hop is the one genre the band is cautious about; Kenny-Smith wants to hone his rap chops so that the band’s music doesn’t risk seeming racially disrespectful.) “I think there’s a part of me that’s just like … I don’t have to do what I’m supposed to do’,” Mackenzie says of the fire hose-like output.

The band relishes “doing it the complete wrong way on purpose,” Mackenzie says, adding: “Because, why not?”

King Gizzard currently has no outside record label overseeing it; instead, it has its own label, KGLW, with a small staff. The band records and mixes its music in its own studio. Jason Galea, a close friend of the band who’s like a seventh member, handles visuals, including album artwork.

Production costs – whether while recording or on tour – are kept low, band members say. They have a publicist, and there’s a distribution arrangement to get records in stores.

Perhaps the most radical thing King Gizzard does is its Bootlegger program, which launched in 2020. Fans can download the band’s intellectual property (select music projects, artwork) and make and even sell customised King Gizzard vinyl records, CDs and merchandise. The band asks that fans send them some copies of what they make – it’s up to fans how much – so they can sell them online.

As a result, more than 700 different bootlegs of King Gizzard albums exist on formats including vinyl, cassette and even eight-track tapes, according to band manager Michelle Cable. Many of these bootlegs are of the band’s 2017 album Polygondwanaland, an album that was given away for free and served as a kind of prototype for the eventual Bootlegger program. Some small record labels have even kick-started their businesses by selling King Gizzard bootlegs.

Another factor fuelling the band’s obsessive subculture is its freewheeling, don’t-know-what-you’re-going-to-get live shows. The pandemic brought King Gizzard’s members closer as both friends and musicians, Walker says. As they refined their musical chemistry, their songs stretched out in length.

“We’re actually having the most fun we ever have,” Mackenzie says. “I think we’re hitting on a looseness that we’ve never been on before … And the shows have gotten jammier.”

The band noticed that more of its fans were seeing multiple shows. So King Gizzard responded by drawing on more of its extensive catalogue when organising set-lists, picking from more than 100 potential songs. To keep track of it all, Mackenzie uses spreadsheets with song entries colour-coded by album.

“I don’t know what I would do without a spreadsheet,” Mackenzie says.

Changing up the show every night and engaging in extended jams keeps the King Gizzard members on their toes as musicians. “You’d think we wouldn’t get bored of the 23 albums that we have – but, like, the reality is you still do,” Kenny-Smith says.

The spontaneous set-lists and Bootlegger program are resonating with US audiences. “These fans are loyal and buy tickets,” promoter Peter Shapiro says.

One of the attendees at the band’s October show in New York was Trey Anastasio, frontman for Phish. Another recent celebrity attendee was Julian Casablancas of the Strokes.

King Gizzard also has a less ­obvious tailwind helping them: the strength of the US dollar. At a time when many US and European musicians are struggling to make a profit on the road due to rising costs, King Gizzard is making US dollars while touring America and converting them into weaker Australian dollars, benefiting from exchange rates. (Something similar is happening with its euro earnings.) That offsets its costs and boosts its income, which is important since King Gizzard – unlike many rock bands these days – has six members and splits its touring profits equally.

When Kenny-Smith returned to Melbourne recently from some US dates with his other band, the Murlocs, he found his King Gizzard bandmates already hard at work hammering out a new album in the studio.

They’re likely to release at least one record this year, Mackenzie says. That could easily turn into two, which they typically aim for. Or maybe five.

Mackenzie is a workaholic, Kenny-Smith says. “It’s non-stop.”

The Wall Street Journal