Murder of the Universe
| Murder of the Universe | ||||
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| Studio album by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard | ||||
| Released | June 23, 2017 | |||
| Studio | Flightless HQ | |||
| Genre | Psychedelic rock, acid rock, progressive rock, garage rock | |||
| Length | 46:38 | |||
| Label | Flightless, ATO, Heavenly | |||
| Producer | Stu Mackenzie | |||
| King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Murder of the Universe | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 73/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |    |
| Clash | 8/10 |
| Exclaim! | 6/10 |
| Pitchfork | 8/10 |
Murder of the Universe is the tenth studio album by Australian psychedelic rock band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. It was released on 23 June 2017 by Flightless Records in Australia,ATO Records in the United States, and Heavenly Recordings in the United Kingdom. It is the second of five albums set to be released in 2017.
Murder of the Universe is a concept album split up into 3 separate stories, each containing elements of spoken word to carry a narrative throughout them. The first two chapters feature Leah Senior's narration, while NaturalReader's "UK, Charles" text-to-speech narrates for the final chapter.
The first, The Tale of the Altered Beast explores themes of temptation, and tells a tale of a human who stumbles upon a mystical human/beast hybrid, dubbed the Altered Beast. The story starts from the perspective of the human being pursued, who slowly takes interest in the idea of being altered – as it is considered taboo in their society. The perspective then changes to the Altered Beast's itself, who is filled with murderous intent to kill. The human encountered by the beast slowly gives into temptation into becoming altered once the beast confronts them, as they crave power. Accepting of their fate, the beast and human merge, creating a newly altered beast, who now craves even more for flesh. However, the beast suffers greatly from absorbing another conscience – it loses track of its identity and eventually dies of insanity, decaying into the earth.
The second story, The Lord of Lightning Vs. Balrog is more focused on a big battle between two entities dubbed The Lord of Lightning and Balrog respectively, who represent the force of light vs darkness. The chapter starts with a foreword from the perspective of a storyteller, who recalls a battle between these two great forces. This story begins from "The Lord of Lightning", which is about the general destruction caused in a town by lightning fired from the entity's finger. He is perceived as evil and malevolent by the townfolk. However, he fires lightning at a corpse, who is somehow reanimated into the creature known as Balrog. This creature chooses to ignore the Lord of Lightning, and instead wreaks further havoc to the townspeople. However, the Lord chooses to fight the Balrog and confronts him – eventually the Balrog is left as a burning corpse. The Lord of Lightning then immediately leaves, choosing not to harm the townsfolk anymore.
The third and final story, Han-Tyumi & The Murder of the Universe, is about a cyborg in a digital world who gains consciousness and through confusion decides he strives only for what a cyborg cannot do – these being vomiting and death. He decides to create a creature dubbed the "Soy-Protein Munt Machine" whose only purpose is to vomit. As the creature rejects his love, Han-Tyumi decides to merge with the machine, which spirals the machine out of control. This machine then explodes and infinitely expels vomit, which eventually engulfs the entire universe, hence the title of the album.
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