When a band takes to the stage and the TWO drummers throw a 16th between four bass drums, you know you’re in for a good time. Aussie prog rockers King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard brought a potent musical alchemy to the White Stage, if only in their penchant for refusing to keep to one time signature or genre.

As a metal fan, it’s a wonderful treat to see a band who run the gamut between 70s prog and late 20th-century thrash. Opening song “Self Immolate” was a metal-laced potion of crunchy thrash breakdowns and gut-punchingly heavy drums. Slipping from that into a sludgy 70s vibe for “Mars For The Rich” provided an interesting counterpoint channeling Deep Purple and Black Sabbath with chugging and widdly guitar solos. “Organ Farmer” followed hot on the heels with galloping riffs all mixed up with tambourine and maracas.

Much as their name might suggest, King Gizzard like to conjure sounds you won’t expect, so 5/4 time signatures (just to point out one of many) in songs like “Crumbling Castle” meant that anyone who wanted to mosh couldn’t quite figure out which beat to headbang to. Not that it mattered. Much of the crowd were off in their own reveries, while breakdowns with dropped, meaty tunings and hammered riffing elicited squeals of delight from this particular audience member and her surrounds.

The overall effect had a ritualistic quality to it, the intensity of more manic moments bleeding into bluesy crescendos, seguing into groovy rolling motifs fronted with chanted lyrics and tribal drumming.

King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard brought much as their name suggests, a slippery aural mind-mash of sonic conjuring that lingered long on the misty afternoon air.