Review Summary: If heavy metal isn’t dead yet just leave it to the retirement home.
King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard’s 24th LP is titled
Petrodragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation. While this is arguably the worst album title ever, upon spinning
Petrodragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation the listener will find that it is perfectly fitting for such trite and unserious music.
Petrodragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation is pure heavy metal, in a similar vein to early
Metallica with a touch of
Motorhead, and is as creatively bankrupt an album as the genre has ever produced. Teleported straight from the 80s (derogatory), guitarists Stu Mackenzie, Joey Walker and Cook Craig abuse their low E strings as if they think Larry Wallis and Papa Het are in the next room over taking turns giving sloppy toppy while the other watches through a peep-hole. Any cool riff is surrounded by countless derivations of the same cool riff until they all become consummately uncool, which is a shame as some of the melodies are genuinely interesting, such as the bridge in “Gila Monster” and the psychedelic jam-sesh on “Flamethrower.” As a rule, anything engaging on
Petrodragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation is trapped halfway through a song that is 3-to-5 minutes too long, like the word “Annihilation”, suffocated between colons and semicolons and gross multiplying diversions, all unseemly and unnecessary.
Otherwise, the production is flat. The drums lack the punch to propel the riffs, the guitars are thin, and the bass is mixed far too low to bolster what could be far heavier. Low E string chugging has been an unconvincing and cheap method to achieve heaviness for decades, but can still be effective with the right production. Unfortunately, the production on
Petrodragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation is completely bereft of heft, hollowing out the heaviest moments and homogenizing the entire experience. Structurally, every song could be the other and there is little dynamic variation, beyond the disparate stoner rock bridge or NWOBHM guitar duel. Perhaps the best example , and most disappointing, is album centerpiece "Dragon." Despite too much low E abuse, the song descends into an interesting riff a la Adam Jones and builds and builds an epic bridge that eventually just becomes "One" by
Metallica. Any creativity here deflates either on impact or in due time. The homogeneity of
Petrodragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation only compounds under Stu Mackenzie’s deficiencies as a vocalist. Whether it be his disaffected, talk-singing or his throaty rumble (no other singing is present here), Mackenzie lacks the charisma to draw the listener into the album. The history of heavy metal shows that vocalist needn’t be good to be effective, but dammit they had better be a rizzler. Stu Mackenzie isn’t even a Once-ler. Maybe he wrote the title for the album on the same day he recorded vocals and he had worn himself out too much to give a sh
it.
"We wrote a song a day, and we came into the practice space with no riffs, no tunes, no ideas, and started from scratch. And we jammed, and recorded everything, and pieced the songs together from that. I’d sketched out the story the songs would tell, and I’d portioned it out into seven song titles, with a short paragraph of what would happen in the song. I guess we kind of made the record backwards.” - Stu Mackenzie
Oh
Petrodragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation wants to be
Master of Puppets but is more of a
72 Seasons, playing as if
Greta Van Fleet adopted the work ethic of
Buckethead and the aspirations and inspirations of
Hail to the King-era
Avenged Sevenfold. Surely heavy metal must be dead if an inoffensive psychedelic rock band can turn and write this middling trash and receive obsequious praise from the gormless dozens who still wear battle jackets and buy new Anthrax albums. It's over guys, leave this Bernie Lomax ass album at the coroner’s before it starts to reek.
