Lizzard Wizzard are probably Brisbane, Australia's best turn-based stoner doom band, and while I'm still waiting for someone to buy me a plane ticket out there to confirm this for myself, their debut recording does suggest it might just be the case.
Opening track 'Twilight Of The Terminator' opens with some heavy Sleep vibes, the lurching menace of the riff sounding like guitarists Michael Clarke and Nick McKeon dipped their joints in embalming fluid before being forced to listen to Dopesmoker 13 hours in a row. Thankfully they keep the running time of the track to a nice concise 5 minutes so as to not send every listener off to the asylum. 'Total Handjob Future' has a similarly woozy gait, with a nice depraved satisfyingly sludgy middle section, the aural equivalent of waking up still hungover and devouring a cold leftover takeaway. You know you shouldn't enjoy something so horrible, but it's so fucking good.
The ludicrously monickered 'Chaaaarles' begins with sparse, damaged guitar and some larynx-ruining yelling before the rhythm section kicks in to transform the track into a slab of angular, atonal sludge. It breaks back down again towards the end before dissolving into feedback, which leads nicely into 'Bong Dive', a far groovier proposition that would have you shaking your ass if you weren't so drunk and in danger of becoming horizontal at any moment. Guitarist Nick's solo in this track is sheer filth, in a sex-type way. Dayum, that's raunchy!
With the sound of a lighter sparking up repeatedly (a nod to 'Sweet Leaf' perhaps?) the band's take on the popular HBO fantasy series theme song hits its stride when that instantly recognisable riff kicks in. There have been a slew of metal covers of this song because, well, metal is for fucking nerds, but endless youtube videos made by symphonic power metal dweebs with BC Rich Warlocks can't compare with 'Game Of Cones'.
The rhythm of the song lends itself far better to a heavier interpretation, and drummer Luke Osborne totally nails the relentless floor-tom battery of the original, and when they've run through the 90 seconds we're all familiar with, they take the tempo down into serious doom territory, giving the track a genuinely melancholic vibe. If they don't shoot a highly intoxicated parody of the series for the video to this song, a la Red Fang, then that'd be an excellent opportunity missed.
The lumbering bass laid down by Stef Roselli sets the mood of 'Reptile Dysfunction', a fuzzed-out banger of a track that lacks variety, but makes up for it by being the only song ever written to feature gang vocals about flaccid squamata. Yep.
The album closes out with the twin-guitar-led slow burner 'Dogs Die In Hot Cars', which meanders along in a similarly wasted fashion to the rest of the tracks, until out of nowhere the spirit of Josh Homme possesses the entire band and they kick out the fuckin' jams. When the demented vocals arrive, you'll swear this is a lost Nick Oliveri-fronted b-side from the Deaf sessions. Culminating in more of the old low 'n' slow, and even some heartbreaking puppy howls, it's probably the cutest ending you could imagine for a doom album.
But this isn't just stoner doom... this is Lizzard Wizzard!
