OMNIUM GATHERUM

King Gizzard has put out many albums in many different genres and almost every album has good songs and the ones that you like the least (or even hate), but when it became clear that we will get a double LP from Gizz a question rose: how many songs will be just fillers and how many will be downright bad? Let's be real, double LPs nowadays usually get boring towards the end and really don't have to offer that much on their second half (other than a few cool songs probably), but this album is... something else, I'd say. You can disagree here and say that the stuff on the second half of Omnium Gatherum is worse than stuff on the first one, which I can actually agree with since the second half has less interesting tracks than the first one, but there are still a lot of bops there, in my opinion.

Now, I need to say that I, personally, don't think this album has any terrible or bad songs, - they're all fine and I can listen to them every day (and I most likely want to) - but of course there is my least favourite one that I'd probably skip every time it turns on (aka Evilest Man or "Newspaper man bad, sell him to Reddit"), which is basically what was supposed to happen eventually, although I'm still surprised I enjoyed every other song on the album more than half of the stuff on Butterfly 3000.

If we take any song from the album, we will see that it has it's own kind of unique style, it's own idea, that was either created back in the time or in 2021, when they were recording the record. As such, Gaia came from Demo №79, The Dripping Tap came from Hat Jam as well as Satanic Slumber Party, a collab EP of TFS and Gizz, and etc., or that it kind of reflects on the compositions the band created before. And I gotta say, making some old scrappy demos and evolve into something that is greater and full-on is a magnificent thing! As well as taking some ideas from previous records and making them into something better.

Speaking of being better, let's talk about the minor flaws in the songs, beginning with Persistence, which is one of the worst songs on the album because of its sex-driven lyrics about cars and love and kind of boring yet groovy instrumental part that was on I'm Sleepin' In back in 2017 on Gumboot Soup, which worked fine on that album, but almost doesn't on this one; Predator X misses more dynamic and thrash metal drums in its second half, which makes it not a 5/5 song; Evilest Man is one of the more boring songs that Gizz have put out in the past few years, but it seems like people enjoy it 'cause it sounds like Nonagon Infinity, which makes a good opportunity for me to call it a day and never listen to that song on my own. And that's probably not even the end of my complaints, but I will stop whining to talk about the better moments of the album. Gaia is just gorgeous, I didn't think that new metal from Gizzard will be that good, since their previous two metal songs, K.G.L.W. Outro and The Hungry Wolf of Fate, were just okay and didn't have the right production to do the job right, but not close to the stuff on Infest The Rats' Nest. Presumptuous is like... well... for some reason it sounds like Nickelback for me. It's so chill and groovy, that I can learn how to flex just to dance to it. Magenta Mountain is basically Butterfly 3000, but at time I enjoy it even more than Blue Morpho, so that probably shows how good the song is, lol. Kepler-22b is another bop on OG and probably the best song on it; its lyrics are the ones I relate to the most, and that downtempo-ish instrumental is really astonishing. I also can't deny the fact that the two rap songs on the record, Sadie Sorceress and The Grim Reaper, are great and I vibe to them a bunch, even though I prefer jazz rap.

The mixing and mastering of the album isn't that great though. It's probably because of the effects that Stu used on some songs except for Ambergris, which has the best and the smoothest mixing on the record for sure, or it's just that the album's been mastered through some sort of hi-fi machine that plays vinyl and then Joe Carra just masters the stuff with aussie magic or something, I don't know how it really works, but it definitely left a huge trail on the album's sound. And it sounds great, really, but also damn weird since it's the first time something like that has been used on a King Gizzard album and because I wasn't expecting everything to have a barely hearable vinyl crisp sound over all songs. If we look back at the last year's album, it doesn't sound like that, it sounds way cleaner, when OG has probably the rawest and somewhat garage sound with no lo-fi of all albums that they've done in the past 8 years, conceding 12 Bar Bruise, their debut LP, which wasn't really lo-fi, it was just noisy and garage-y, when others (i.e. Float Along - Fill Your Lungs and Oddments) were. I also have to admit that the transitions between tracks on this record are sick. Even sicker than the ones on Polygondwanaland and BF3K.

All in all, Omnium Gatherum is definitely one of the better albums of the year for now. I really hope these guys won't fall off on their next three albums and won't give us a metal album with a vinyl crisp sound over it at all times, that'd suck.