Murder of the Universe is a concept album split into three separate stories, each containing elements of spoken word to carry a narrative. The first two chapters feature Leah Senior's narration, while NaturalReader's "UK, Charles" text-to-speech application narrates the final chapter. The first chapter, The Tale of the Altered Beast, explores themes of temptation and tells of a human who stumbles on a mystical human/beast hybrid dubbed the Altered Beast. The story starts with the pursuit of the human being, who slowly takes an interest in the idea of being altered – something considered taboo in the human's society. The perspective then changes to the Altered Beast itself, who is filled with murderous intentions. Confronted by the Beast, the human experiences a craving for power and slowly succumbs to the temptation of becoming altered. Accepting their mutual fate, the beast and human merge, creating a newly altered beast, who now craves even more flesh. However, the Altered Beast suffers greatly from absorbing another consciousness – it loses track of its identity and eventually dies of insanity, decaying into the earth. The second chapter, The Lord of Lightning vs. Balrog, focuses on a big battle between two entities dubbed The Lord of Lightning and Balrog, who represent the forces of light and darkness, respectively. The chapter starts with a foreword from the perspective of a storyteller who recalls the battle. The action begins with the track "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 townsfolk. However, when he fires lightning at a corpse, it is somehow reanimated as a creature known as Balrog. This creature chooses to ignore the Lord of Lightning, and instead wreaks further havoc on the townspeople. The Lord chooses to fight the Balrog and confronts him, eventually leaving him as a burning corpse. The Lord of Lightning immediately departs, choosing not to harm the townsfolk anymore. The third and final chapter, Han-Tyumi & The Murder of the Universe, is about a cyborg in a digital world who gains consciousness and, in confusion, decides to strive only for what a cyborg cannot do: vomit and die. He decides to create a creature dubbed the "Soy-Protein Munt Machine" whose only purpose is to vomit. When the creature rejects his love, Han-Tyumi decides to merge with the machine, which causes it to lose control. This machine explodes and infinitely expels vomit, which eventually engulfs the entire universe in a type of grey goo scenario: and so the universe is murdered.
Reception
Murder of the Universe received positive reviews from music critics. On Metacritic, the album holds an average critic score of 73/100, based on 15 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews". AllMusic's Tim Sendra wrote in his review for the album that, "King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard's second album of 2017 is a rampaging, feverish blast of sci-fi prog punctuated by whizzing synths and robotic voice-overs." Exclaim!'s Cosette Schulz commented that "The 21-track album is certainly the strangest and most draining release that King Gizzard have made to date; not as ambitious as the seamlessly looping Nonagon Infinity, or this year's earlier release Flying Microtonal Banana, but a feat nonetheless."
Accolades
Track listing
All music composed by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard; all lyrics written by Stu Mackenzie; stories written by Mackenzie, except "Murder of the Universe" written by Joey Walker and Mackenzie. Vinyl releases have tracks 1–12 on side A, and tracks 12–21 on side B; "The Lord of Lightning" is split between the two sides.
Personnel
Credits for Murder of the Universe adapted from liner notes. King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard
