King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Share Release Date For Orchestral Album 'Phantom Island'

A week after announcing their 27th album, Phantom Island, on social media, Australian psychedelic rockers King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have shared a new single and revealed the album’s release date.

The new album is less than two months away. Phantom Island will be released on Friday, 13 June, via the band’s own p(doom) records, and the new single Deadstick is out now.

The band had already teased that the upcoming full-length would be an orchestral record, and a new press release confirms that fact, stating that King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s songcraft has expanded by “embracing the symphonic and embroidering their tangles of lysergic riff and melody with strings and horns and woodwind.”

The early days of Phantom Island can be traced back to the group’s unforgettable show at the Hollywood Bowl in June 2023, in which members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic met up with the band backstage and urged them to have a go at a program whereby a rock act performs with an orchestra.

While working on last year’s Flightb741, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard came up with ten more songs that didn’t fit on that album, and according to frontman Stu Mackenzie, “were harder to finish. Musically, they needed a little more time and space and thought.” 

That’s where the LA Philharmonic came in. “The songs felt like they needed this other energy and colour, that we needed to splash some different paint on the canvas,” Mackenzie said. He then contacted a friend, British historical keyboardist, conductor and arranger Chad Kelly.

Phantom Island may pick up where Flightb741 left things, telling more adventure stories, but Mackenzie noted that the upcoming album is more melancholy and “introverted.” He explained, “When I was younger, I was just interested in freaking people out. But as I get older, I’m much more interested in connecting with people.”

You can pre-order/pre-save Phantom Island here and check out Deadstick below.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard will embark on their Phantom Island orchestral tour in July and August for their only US tour of 2025. They’ll head to the UK and Europe in October and November.

The band unveiled the title track of the album in October. Mackenzie said at the time, “Hello world. So our last album was 10 songs. Except we recorded 20 in that session. Here’s a track from the other set of 10. It’s even more maxxed out than the last one. There’s a whole fuckin’ orchestra on there. Hahahahahah!

“But for real, what a joy to be alive. A privilege to be making music for a living and to be here still after all these years. If you’ve been listening to Gizz for a long time, thank you. We love you so much. If you’re just tuning in, welcome to the cult.”