Check out my review of Hellmouth Comics‘ adaptation of the psychedelic rock album Polygondwanaland by King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard. It’s live on kglw.net. The author and illustrator were kind enough to answer questions for an interview, which will be posted later. Keep thy three eyes open wide.

In the meantime, here’s a primer on my relationship to the source material. I was quite driven to write this review for powerful personal reasons.

In 2017, after a long hike in Griffith Park, I returned home to find a new music video posted by my favorite band. I watched it immediately and was startled to discover my journey continuing. The song was the opening track of a sequel-album to Murder of the Universe, which I had just finished playing on a loop during my sojourn. Or a prequel… Or maybe some kind of “paraquel” taking place between the moments of the albums on either side. My memory of that era dips into the mystical (and quasi-psychotic), so synchronicities buzzed in the air like static.

Polygondwanaland is one of most mysterious albums by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, a band known for wild artistic swings. For instance, this album is free. Free as in, free. Now, a full six years later, hundreds of official bootleggers pump out various versions of this infinitely plural seed. Fans also quickly noticed a shared universe of themes and imagery within the albums released in rapid succession. Poly (as it’s nicknamed) is one such case, with musical motifs and narrative references drawing in the listener like an alien intelligence luring its next psychic meal. To this day, fans still debate over its meaning, if it has one. It’s one of the enduring examples of the band’s power of prog.

The music relays an epic tale in four chapters, which Hellmouth Comics has endeavored to mirror in their own graphic retelling. A castle crumbles, a land is travelled, a despot rises, a rebellion crushed, a Fourth Colour seen. One of the greatest aspects of the album is that it’s intrinsically subjective. Many try to extract the concrete story within its polyrhythmic grooves, but I firmly believe it’s true nature can only reside in one’s mind. Once you try to pass it into the light of day, the concepts evaporate like a mirage.

Joe Courtney, the comic writer, understands this. Even in laying down the Poly narrative with confidence about its accuracy to its source, he keeps the mystery safely nestled within the pages, waiting for the reader to see themselves within its reflexive depths. That’s how this comic earns its place in the Gizzverse, a perfect branching of the arboreal cosmos we celebrate here in the weirdo swarm. I believe the hyperbole.

Poly became another album I listened to on a loop. It’s an ear worm farm, an ear worm planet. I would listen to Murder and Poly, back and forth, and in alternating order. I could hear the resonances between them, could see the parallel dimensions overlaying each other to create new permutations of reality. KGLW had gifted me a puzzle box of unfolding potential. I was also toiling deep in the literary mines of Philip K. Dick’s Exegesis in those days, so there was no end to my ability to connect daily reality to Taoist syncopation. Plus, the plugs were everywhere. This was psychotronic pulp. A psyche rock album declaring itself psychoactive and promising to spill into all-worlds and gobble us up in a blasphemous satire of humanity. God, yes!

Those times were dark politically. Not that now is much different. My brain has become so warped, all I can remember is living in terror every day, until it sank into my skin to became my new filter for the world. I had to adapt. Mutate into the new kind of human fit for this altered world. Poly helped me do that. A sort of nirvana is achieved within the lore of the album, which seems to equate to or trigger the titular apocalypse in Murder of the Universe. A lot of words for “end of days” were on the tips of tongues back then. We yearned for it to be over but couldn’t imagine anything less than carnage as a satisfying conclusion.

KGLW granted me the pharmakon to experience it in controlled bursts. In my car and in my headphones, I sonically healed in self-contained sessions of screaming and head-banging. I was liable to fall into either isolated mania or the folie à plusieurs of a cult. Instead, I became a music dork. I obsessed over Gizzverse, and wrote reams of silly expansions. In 2018, I finally attended a concert where they played Crumbling Castle straight into Fourth Colour, and it was over. I was a mindless Gizzhead shambling around this desolate land, clamoring for all souls to saved in Han-Tyumi’s sweet & tangy embrace. Obsession is good, good for ya.

So check out the album, then check out the comic. A PDF version will be available online, with another print run coming later. The author’s got more cooking, which has became a stable of the Gizz way of life: just keep going. Keep making things. Make music, make art, make merch and share it with your peers. You’re still alive, even after all this time. Revel in the mystery and the nonsense. You’re here, but you can learn barely anything beyond that. All the language and philosophy humans have crafted eventually evaporates as it passes from mouth to ear, and all else is mist and static. The vibrations we share depend upon a faith that they were launched with compassion. Cultivate that faith, cultivate that compassion. Trust in the River.

You’re still here, and I’m here with you. That’s something to celebrate. Take the plunge. Smile, dance, drink, and drop. Float along & fill your lungs. Take a deep breath. You’re alive. You’re alive. You’re alive.

Hello.