It's probably cheating to post King Gizzard during our impromptu "Australia week", when I've used bands you've almost certainly never heard of prior to this moment. Everyone's heard of King Gizzard! But have you heard this King Gizzard? Thrash metal Gizzard? Because it rocks so insanely hard.

This album doesn't really sound like any other metal that has come before it, because it just feels way more indebted to video game music than any other vaguely similar band. There's just something Doom, something Sonic Mayhem's Quake 2 sound track about this entire album. It's theatrical, it's heavy, it's scary and thrilling.

This album forced me to open myself up to more types of metal, and I dabbled in a few other bands as a result: Red Mountain, High On Fire, Anthrax, early Metallica, Orange Goblin, and probably some others, but none of them stuck with me the way Infest the Rats' Nest did. No joke, I listened to this album probably over 50 times in 2019 - 2020...