King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard – Infest The Rats' Nest (Opaque Black Vinyl)

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s Infest the Rats’ Nest is the band’s fifteenth studio album, originally released in 2019, and one of their sharpest left-turns: a full-bore thrash metal record built around ecological collapse, class escape fantasies, and life beyond a ruined Earth. Arriving only months after the much looser Fishing for Fishies, it pushed their restless catalogue into harsher territory while keeping the group’s taste for big concepts intact.

The key point is that this is not a casual genre exercise. Sources consistently place it as King Gizzard’s heaviest album to that point, drawing directly on late-1980s thrash touchstones such as Metallica, Slayer, Exodus, Kreator and Overkill. The album’s story moves from the scorched-earth charge of “Planet B” and “Mars for the Rich” toward a bleak sci-fi arc of off-world survival, giving the record a genuine narrative drive rather than just speed for its own sake.

It also stands out for how focused it is. Contemporary coverage noted a rare power-trio core of Stu Mackenzie, Joey Walker and Michael Cavanagh shaping much of the record, which helps explain its lean, hard-hitting feel. That concentration paid off critically too: AllMusic included it in its 2019 Favorite Metal Albums, and even outside metal circles it was widely treated as a surprisingly convincing statement from a band better known for psych-rock mutability.

This 2026 Pet Ecosonic edition keeps the original black look but changes the material itself: it is made with injection-moulded PET plastic rather than standard vinyl, a sustainability-minded pressing approach that makes this version distinct in the album’s reissue history.

Features

• Opaque Black Vinyl, Pet Ecosonic edition
• Injection-moulded PET plastic record

Reviews

• the results are incredible - AllMusic.com
• their most succinct and single-minded statement to date - Pitchfork
• the record a barnburner - Rolling Stone Australia