King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard PLAYS toronto

On October 18 the Australian psych-rock band played their long-awaited concert in Toronto while touring North America which all started at the end of September. At the time of this concert the band had already released four projects in 2022, the most recent ones being "Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava" and "Laminated Denim," which dropped only six days before this concert. Furthermore, the band has just released another album a few weeks after this show on October the 28th titled "Changes,'' which amounts to a grand total of three King Gizzard album releases in the month of October alone. Clearly this band made use of the extra studio time during the pandemic. This show in Toronto was one of only two Canadian dates scheduled for this tour so it's needless to say the show was sold out. The band has already spent most of this year on the road and if they weren't headlining their own concerts in some of the biggest cities across the world, they were playing large festivals such as Desert Daze, Bonnaroo and Primavera Sound in Spain.

The opener was singer Leah Senior who was touring with the band for a number of the dates on this trip across North America, and I'm sure she received some great exposure from the KG fan base. For the night's main event in Toronto, King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard would take the stage at the History concert venue and go on to perform a full 15 song set. Some of the notable songs from the setlist are "Predator X" which is about the time when the crowd surfers started. My personal favorite song from the performance, however, was the synth inspired, soon to be classic "Magenta Mountain" — a single off the album "Omnium Gatherum" released last April.

One thing I noticed and really loved is how this band plays extended jams of a lot of their songs and adds in elements different than what you would hear on the studio versions. One example of this is on the live version of "Rattlesnake." The band added some additional backup vocals that you won't hear in the studio recording. That is the beauty of playing live, of course, as artists can do various forms of improv, which King Gizzard partakes in quite a bit.

The imagery of the band rocking in front of the HD screen displaying a lava-flow like pattern during the extended 'Magma' jam session was something that stuck in my mind long after the show was over. It was totally epic, iconic, and worth the price of admission if I didn't have a media pass to the show already. The last song of the night turned out to be "The Dripping Tap" which sent everyone at the sold out house home happy.

With many amazing acts like Tame Impala, Pond, Hatchie, and King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard, there is truly something special coming out of Australia musically over the past 10 years. Decades from now we will look back on this era of Aussie bands and we'll be happy that we were there to have experienced it in person. I know, for me, this show is something I will never forget. Going into this show, I was feeling a bit down with the gray, fall blues while the summer was quickly fading from memory, but it's the power of great music that can do this to us. Just sounds, lights, atmosphere, it brought me to another world — made me feel whole again. Sometimes music is just what the doctor ordered when our souls feel empty.