Nine months ago, the hype began to build around King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard in a whole new way. Toward the end of 2024, the 27-albums-in-15-years Australian genre-mutants announced a tour stitched together from three very different beasts: their usual rock blowouts, some peculiar rave sets, and, most interestingly, a smattering of symphonic performances. The initial announcement, though, left one glaring omission: no date in Los Angeles.

But if you were at the Kia Forum last November for their three-hour marathon set, you might remember Joey Walker slyly hinting that a certain orchestra-backed freakout in the hills might be in the works. On Sunday night, it finally arrived at the Hollywood Bowl—two years after Gizz’s expanded jam at the iconic venue in the Hollywood Hills—and it was gloriously absurd. The self-effacing sextet of Walker, Stu Mackenzie, Ambrose Kenny-Smith, Cook Craig, Lucas Harwood, and Michael Cavanagh captivated the Los Angeles crowd with two hours of kaleidoscopic sound, elastic jams, and symphonic mind-melt conducted by the ever-composed Sarah Hicks and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.

If the Gizzverse is already a swirling cosmic stew, the orchestra turned it into a multi-layered. inter-dimensional fondue. Strings shimmered, brass blasted, and the harp fluttered like a rope ladder dropped straight into your third eye.

The show began with the band performing its new album, Phantom Island, front-to-back with the full orchestral armada, just as it was on record. The title track opened like a sunrise over alien water, the orchestra washing the Bowl in pastels while Stu delivered his distortion-soaked sermons.

“Deadstick” saw Kenny-Smith strolling the catwalk like a psychedelic messiah with a harmonica, “Lonely Cosmos” unfurled like a cinematic slow-burn, and “Eternal Return” dissolved into dreamlike harp cascades. From “Panpsych”, “Spacesick”, and “Aerodynamic” to “Sea of Doubt” and “Silent Spirit”, Australia’s favorite garage rockers combined with the instruments around them and the illustrative graphics behind them to create a lush and deeply textured audio-visual experience like nothing the Hollywood Bowl has seen before.

By the time King Gizz came to the album closer of “Grow Wings and Fly”, the whole thing erupted into a glorious mess. There were teases of “Plastic Boogie”, a molten jam quoting “The Dripping Tap” and “Magma”, all with the orchestra roaring like a planet’s crust splitting open. The Gizz/Orchestra combo was more than tight; it was telepathic.

As the orchestra took a breather, Gizz tore into a heavy, churning “Open Water”. Ambrose, not content to simply play music, ate popcorn center stage, then casually swept it up while his bandmates continued to jam. It felt like performance art, or maybe just another night of Sunday scaries in the Gizzverse.

The orchestra returned for a second set of Gizz favorites, with the weirdness dial cranked to 11. “The River” (Parts I, II, and IV) surged in shimmering waves before slamming into “Crumbling Castle”, which dissolved into an instrumental outro that felt like floating over a desert at night.

Walker, in full deadpan, introduced “This Thing” as “a song about L.A.” before pivoting to dedicate “Mars for the Rich” to “Elon Musk, who’s a fucking idiot.” Laughter rippled through the Bowl, even (if not especially) among the many Tesla drivers in attendance.

Then came “Dragon”, molten and unrelenting, and “Iron Lung”, where Ambrose climbed down into the crowd, located a bucket of popcorn, and dumped it directly on his own head. His mom, on her first trip to L.A., looked on proudly from somewhere in the stands.

King Gizzard are already a live shapeshifter, jumping from microtonal psych and thrash metal to motorik krautrock and jam-band fluidity without missing a beat. Layering a full orchestra over that could’ve been a gimmick. Instead, it felt inevitable. Sarah Hicks and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra did more than “back” Gizz. They became part of the organism, expanding the sound in three dimensions without ever muting the band’s feral energy.

With their follow-up at San Diego’s Rady Shell now behind them, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard will warp to Buena Vista, Colorado for their Field of Vision “rock ’n’ roll camping” festival. After that? A European swing of orchestral and rave shows, before closing the year with a December run of symphonic dates back home in Australia. Click here to for a full list of upcoming shows and ticketing details.

The Gizzverse never sits still, but Sunday night proved something new. When you hand these Aussie space lizards a symphony, they’ll build you a wormhole and throw you in, popcorn and all.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Hollywood Bowl – Los Angeles, CA – 8/10/25 [Video Playlist]
[Video: S.Parker]

Setlist: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard | Hollywood Bowl | Los Angeles, CA | 8/10/25
Set 1: Phantom Island: Deadstick, Lonely Cosmos, Eternal Return, Panpsych, Spacesick, Aerodynamic, Sea of Doubt, Silent Spirit, Grow Wings and Fly (with Plastic Boogie teases and Hypertension jam with The Dripping Tap and Magma teases -> Open Water (normal / heavy version)
Set 2: The River (Parts I, II, and IV only), Crumbling Castle (with instrumental outro), This Thing, Mars for the Rich, Dragon, Iron Lung
Notes:
Orchestral show with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra conducted and directed by Sarah Hicks.
All songs with Hollywood Bowl Orchestra except “Open Water”.