Uber-prolific Australian band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard has released nearly 30 albums since its 2012 debut — in other words, the band isn’t known for the drawn-out studio perfectionism that often stymies musicians.

But with Alien Metal, its 28th studio album — and first in 14 months, an eternity in the Gizzverse – King Gizzard did something out of character: It took its time.

And with good reason. Out today (Aug. 14), Alien Metal is arguably the biggest swing in a catalog full of them, as the sextet best known for wild, garage-meets-psych-rock ditched its guitars in favor of a hulking Eurorack, a type of modular synthesizer developed in the ’90s that all of its members could play simultaneously. The band began trotting the rig out for “rave shows” in late 2024, and affectionately named it Nathan; after a quiet touring year, it returns to the road, presumably with Nathan in tow, for its second annual Field of Vision camping festival outside of Denver this weekend, and four New York City shows later this month.

Alien Metal isn’t completely without precedent in King Gizzard’s catalog — the band has been incorporating electronic sounds into its music for the last several years, including on the 2023 electropop album The Silver Cord — but with the album’s pummeling, high-BPM tracks, King Gizzard ventures further onto the dance floor than it ever has.

According to the band’s Stu Mackenzie, as King Gizzard’s members began to conceive the album, they thought, “We’ve already done a few [electronic] things which were interesting to us. Let’s lean into the tropes a little bit more with this one — but also, let’s see if we can create something that feels like we made it, and that feels like it has its own DNA.”

That forced King Gizzard to operate well beyond its comfort zone, and helps to explain the patience making the album required. “We definitely scrapped more material for this record than we ever have, which was not something we expected to do,” Mackenzie, 35, says over Zoom from his native Melbourne. “It needed to congeal — it needed to set.”

Still, the band held onto its aggressively DIY ethos for Alien Metal, with its members modding out the Eurorack themselves and recording their experiments in their own Melbourne warehouse studio space, with “rats running along the floor and s–t.” As Mackenzie puts it, “We’ve just been doing this s–t ourselves, man. This is some f–king truly mad scientist, making explosions in the bathtub-type stuff.”

But while King Gizzard recorded the album over “a good couple years,” true to form, the restlessly creative band worked on several other projects concurrently. “Whole records were formulated and thought of and expanded on and recorded — and, you know, completely abandoned,” he reveals. “Maybe they’ll turn into something eventually.”

Plus, Alien Metal might not be as dissimilar from King Gizzard’s other output, anyway. “There are certain parallels with a lot of the heavy metal stuff we’ve done to techno, and to some of the more krautrock-ish, hypnotic, longer stuff that we’ve done,” Mackenzie says. “Maybe there is a thread with King Gizz and dance music that isn’t so far away.”

You and King Gizzard have been dabbling with dance music in recent years, from The Silver Cord to your “rave tours” with Nathan the Eurorack, to Mango Sticky Rice, the batch of modular ambient recordings you made on your own and released late last year. How did all these strands coalesce and inform Alien Metal?

King Gizz has been experimenting with electronic music in certain capacities for quite a long time, whether that was what we were doing with Silver Cord or whether it was what we were doing in a different way with 2021’s Butterfly 3000 [and its companion set of remixes Butterfly 3001], or with the rave tours, or [2022’s] Made in Timeland. Certain things that we’ve done have felt, to varying degrees, [like] “rock band making electronic music,” which is not like something that I think is even bad — it’s actually something that I think is quite interesting. But it is not what we were trying to do with this record. And it meant that this record needed more development than we thought it would.

It’s quite challenging to write songs, in the traditional sense, with this equipment, and I don’t think it’s what it’s good at or built for, but that therefore became interesting [to us]. Trying to figure out how to do six-person improvisational electronic music with [this] hardware — all the Eurorack stuff with f–king patch cables on the outside, just nightmare tech stuff — is all wrapped into the story as much as any of the [band’s prior] recording projects are.

That context is what we arrived at Alien Metal with. It’s like, “What are we doing here with this record?” That’s something that we are always trying to find when making a record: What’s its sort of personality, you know? That’s why naming a record can be so powerful early on, because you stop calling it “it” and you start calling it Alien Metal. It takes on its personality, and you start to follow its footsteps. You start to follow its rhythm.

So you named it before you were finished with it?

We don’t always [do that], but we usually do. It actually helps, at least me, with finishing things, because you have a North Star. You have a purpose, and it makes the decision-making a little easier.

When it comes to writing, what limitations did this equipment present, compared to your typical instrumentation — and how did those limitations open up new creative possibilities?

With the hardware stuff and the Eurorack stuff, it’s not so much about limitations as it’s endless. It’s actually insane how many sounds you can get out of these boxes. It’s f–king amazing, and if you’re creative about the patch you’re making, you can do truly wild s–t. That is a big challenge in the sense of what kind of sounds you want to work with. We had to spend time figuring out what we were wanting to do that was exciting to us, and that involved a lot of learning. Like, this s–t is some mad scientist s–t. But it’s cool. I feel like I understand music in a different way — and I certainly understand voltage in a different way. And math, there’s a lot of math in this stuff too, and some science.

The other thing that’s quite interesting about it is this format, the Eurorack, it’s like the patch cables on the outside, you build modules and you piece together a synth or voices or whatever — but everyone makes something different, and I can understand my patch, but I can’t necessarily rationalize why any of the other guys made the patch that they did. It’s this window into someone’s creative process. It’s actually a super visual window, with all the cables hanging out on the outside. I’ve fallen in love with that as just an expression in itself.

King Gizzard is still doing rock shows. What has the cross-pollination been like? How, if at all, has this impacted how you view your guitar-based music?

It’s made me have a different kind of appreciation for the guitar, and also acoustic or unsynthesized, organic instruments. With this patch-from-scratch mentality of Eurorack stuff, you have to build everything from the ground up. To make something resemble even a bassline is a lot of patching, and then it might actually sound quite boring, and then you hear somebody play a bass guitar through an amp, and you’re like, “Man, that sounds awesome!” You just pluck an acoustic guitar string and listen to the decay and the way it fills the room…

I think about sound now in a way that I didn’t think about sound [before]. I thought about music, and notes and melody and harmony and stuff. But it forces you to think about things at a much more rudimentary level, because ultimately all this thing is doing is sending voltages to things. You just have to think about it on a more atomic level, a more cellular level, a more granular level.

What are the biggest dance touchstones for you and the rest of the band?

If you asked [bandmate] Joey [Walker] this question, he would like be so excited, and he would want to tell you about everything that had a big impact on his life. I would love to give you such a deep answer, but the honest truth is, for me, my entry point is as much the equipment as anything. I’ve just become obsessed with this format of synthesizer and thinking about sound in this new way — and that’s what I listen to. I get home, and when my kids go to bed, I turn on my synth, and I’m just trying to understand why when I plug the jack into this socket, it does this, and why when I plug the jack into the socket next to it, it does that.

One aspect that hasn’t changed here compared to some of your previous albums is the world-building: There’s references to an “astral blacksmith” and a “mortician,” and one song’s lyrics declare, “We don’t wish death — but we will kill for the steel.” What can you tell me about the lore of Alien Metal?

I would love to get into this s–t. But do you know what? I’ve found that recently, over the last couple of years, I say things I don’t even agree with. I would hope that people can experience this album at face value — or dig in. That’s my hope here. The lyrics don’t have to be the centerpoint, either.

This is the third straight year with only one new King Gizzard album, compared to some years in the past where you’ve released anywhere from two to five projects. Last year’s Phantom Island was an ambitious orchestral project, with a corresponding orchestral tour. Are you settling into a less frequent release schedule — and what’s the next frontier you want to conquer?

We’ve got two sort of ideas. Not even ideas, but we have two records that are like three-quarters finished at the moment, which is a bit silly and does happen sometimes. We definitely have slowed down in finishing records. If you had have asked me this when I was younger, like in my mid-twenties, I probably would have had a bit more fire; I was more desperately ambitious, maybe. I’m happy to let things take their needed amount of time, at the moment. That might be one record a year right now; maybe there’ll be a couple in quick succession coming up. I don’t know. There was a stretch, toward the start of King Gizz records, where we were doing two a year. We weren’t thinking about it super hard, but if one wasn’t done, we’d just f–king make one. As you get older, doing stuff like that is harder.

Your touring schedule is more limited this year compared to previous years, but you’re celebrating the release of Alien Metal with your second annual Field of Vision festival outside of Denver, and you’re heading to New York City later this month for a run of four shows. What can you share about those gigs, and what’s next for the band’s touring?

There was something about the last Field of Vision that was just so special on so many levels. It felt magical, it felt unreal, in a lot of ways. So yeah, excited to get back there. Next year, we are also returning to more of a normal, busy touring schedule. But this year we have been quiet on the touring level — besides a bit of COVID period there, it’s got to be the quietest that we’ve ever been. We’ve been busy with life, and also just making music. We’ve been on home soil a lot lately, which is cool. Family, life — the ship of life doesn’t stop sailing.

The Elegance Of Time, a glossy, 256-page coffee table book by Swiss-Iranian photographer Anoush Abrar, honors and illuminates the central tenet of Montreux Jazz Festival: this is an event for musicians to let go and collaborate spontaneously; to surrender to the moment.

“In the live business, what makes Montreux Jazz so different is the luxury of time that we’re giving to artists,” festival CEO Mathieu Jaton tells Billboard U.K. “That’s where the magic comes out. We want to give them time for creativity and inspiration, and for meeting people. When they’re staying in Montreux for two or three days, we will accept the cost of the hotel and catering et cetera and give them the space to fully be here.”

Released earlier this year to mark the festival’s 60th anniversary, The Elegance Of Time brings together more than 300 photographs spanning the past decade of performances and candid backstage moments, tracing the more recent evolution of Montreux Jazz through Abrar’s lens. Published alongside a new exhibition based in the Swiss resort town, the book features intimate images of artists including Sam Smith, Jon Batiste, RAYE and Benson Boone, capturing a newer slate of acts that have revitalized the concert series’ backstory; this year’s event, which kicked off on July 3, runs through July 18

Jaton, who has led the festival since 2013, inherited the role from founder Claude Nobs, whose vision transformed a small jazz gathering into one of the world’s most revered music events. Their shared backgrounds in hospitality are no coincidence. Before launching Montreux Jazz in 1967, Nobs worked as a fine dining chef, while Jaton began his career in Switzerland’s hotel industry. It is a lineage that continues to shape the festival’s identity today, with a particular emphasis on how artists are welcomed and cared for, treating them more like guests of the city.

When visiting Montreux, Jaton wagers, musicians “have less stress and more fun”; they are encouraged by the festival organizers to extend their trip and explore the surrounding locale, which is home to studios previously used by Queen and David Bowie and is recognized by UNESCO as a pivotal location for musical history. Montreux has a population of 27,000, and there is “no fanaticism in Switzerland,” Jaton says, meaning that audiences are appreciative but rarely intrusive, allowing artists to roam around with relative anonymity.

British soul-pop star Sienna Spiro, who returned to the festival on Monday (July 6) to perform in celebration of her debut LP Visitor, concurs. When Billboard U.K. meets the singer backstage at the newly-reopened Montreux Music & Convention Centre, home to venues Auditorium Stravinski and the Montreux Jazz Lab, she opens her iPhone camera roll to show us a montage of memories here: swimming in Lake Geneva, watching old Nina Simone footage from the Montreux Jazz archives, walking along the town’s cobbled avenues with her team at dusk. 

“I feel at home performing here,” Spiro says. “I feel like the novelty of this festival doesn’t wear off. If I do some other festivals a second time, I don’t get that rush or ‘first time feeling’, but I definitely still have that for this. I’m so honored and grateful to be able to play this festival.”

So, what’s the magic in the water? Originally launched in 1967, Montreux Jazz has grown into an annual, two weeklong extravaganza that now spans genres far beyond its original remit. Such is its mythology that it has inspired some of music’s most enduring stories: Deep Purple’s “Smoke On The Water” was written after a fire at the Montreux Casino in 1971, which broke out during a Frank Zappa performance; Prince made the town a recurring creative home throughout the 2000s, with impromptu festival appearances and “Lavaux,” a song inspired by the breadth and beauty of the Alpine peaks. Ella Fitzgerald became a festival regular, while Miles Davis lent his name to a stretch of the lakeside promenade.

The question, then, is perhaps no longer whether the festival deserves its reputation, but how it continues to reinvent that legacy with every new generation of artists that passes through its site. Even a brief perusal of this year’s line-up will throw up names from the worlds of dance (Danny L. Harle), alternative pop and R&B (PinkPantheress, Giveon, Kwn), hip-hop (The Roots, Loyle Carner) and jazz (Marcus Miller, Charles Lloyd, Billy Cobham). 

RAYE, meanwhile, kicked off proceedings this year with a curated show on July 3 billed as Moments In Time, inviting guests Alicia Keys and Mark Ronson to perform orchestral renditions of highlights from the London singer’s catalog. Its exclusivity was testament to Montreux’s unique pull: a festival powerful enough to bring global stars together for a one-off performance.

Outside of the main bill, attendees can explore dozens of free pop-up shows, while the Montreux Jazz ecosystem can be felt at almost every turn. Opposite the conference center stands a merch shop stocked with football jerseys, serving plates, Keith Haring-style art prints, flip-flops and even an eco bike. MJF-branded Porsches cruise through the streets. There is a Montreux Jazz cafe at Geneva Airport and other licensing projects are in the works. Public transport is made free in order to extend the festival’s reach into the neighboring villages, while colorful murals of the late Nobs adorn post boxes and pavement corners.

All of this serves to bring Montreux’s history into the present, as Jaton explains: “I’m so proud, honestly, that we have some Swiss journalists questioning whether what we are doing is purely that to attract a younger audience,” he says. “No, it’s not a strategy, it’s just that we have the opportunity to host some of the biggest artists that are making music today. When you have an artist like PinkPantheress recognized by The BRIT Awards as the first female act to win producer of the year, it means something. So, she simply has to play Montreux.”

Having played the previous year, and appeared at a Spotlight Sessions event in between editions, Spiro is a key ambassador for Montreux Jazz and her inclusion on the 2026 line-up is indicative of the festival’s search for new torchbearers. It is “a wild honor” to brush up against decades of musical history, Spiro explains, and even more so to be part of the 16 British acts represented at this year’s Montreux Jazz, the most of any nation from across the bill.

“British music has just something special about it, our artists have a rare kind of honesty, grit and rawness to their work,” she says. “I feel like a lot of us are true musicians too. RAYE uses a proper live band, as does Olivia [Dean] and Lola [Young]. It shouldn’t be seen as ‘old school’ as this approach is obviously really connecting with people.”

During her set at the Montreux Jazz Lab, Spiro aired her own take on the jazz standard “Autumn Leaves,” as well as a cover of Otis Redding’s “Hard To Handle,” giving two classics a fresh perspective. There was evidence of that same cross-generational connection throughout: in Kwn’s set earlier in the evening, where an attentive, near phone-free audience revealed their surprise through their facial expressions as she joked that they “didn’t realize I make sex songs”, and in Nick Cave’s rapturous performance the night before, when he shouted “F–king Montreux” in delight over and over. Younger punters attending PinkPantheress lined buses towards the venue in tartan berets and fluffy stomper boots, with their parents in tow.

Those moments – a young artist discovering the festival archives that inspired generations before them, or a secret special guest arriving in town – are what keep Montreux moving forward, Jaton affirms. He points to 2026 headliner Conan Gray as an example of the festival’s approach to booking fresh faces. While the Gen Z-beloved singer is capable of selling out arenas in other European markets, he remains a comparatively new name in Switzerland.

“When I announced Conan Gray at our press conference, people said, ‘We don’t know him,’” Jaton recalls. “Meanwhile, he sold 18,000 tickets in Paris in 10 minutes this year, and sold out The O2 in London.” Many young Swiss fans are already traveling abroad to see artists like Gray, he says, making it all the more important to bring them to a domestic audience. That may mean attracting smaller crowds as awareness builds, or putting more resources into marketing output, but, for Jaton, it is a worthwhile investment in the festival’s future. He adds: “We have to bet on the potential of a new artist each time, but I’m happy to take that risk.”

In Jaton’s view, the artists who define and expand Montreux Jazz today may not be the ones audiences expect, but the festival’s principles remain the same as they were six decades ago: create the right environment for both artists and fans, and the history will take care of itself.

“We always have to look to the future. It’s good to have the past, the history, the patrimony of Montreux – that’s essential. But it’s even more essential to think about the future and the next generation,” Jaton concludes. “So when I’m criticized for booking an act because ‘it’s not jazz’, I actually find it interesting. My answer is simple: I don’t care what you think – I know it’s right.”

This story is part of Billboard’s Global World Cup Series, a collection of stories which pairs top soccer stars across the world competing in the 2026 FIFA World Cup with highly-touted musicians in accompanying countries.

Unflashy and unassuming, Nguyen Nhat Minh is the truest definition of Vietnam U23’s resilience. Fans see his sheer tenacity on the pitch, yet few realize that behind this composed fortress lies a man of deep reflection. Nhat Minh harbors a love for football profound and forgiving enough to transform every bitter hardship into the driving force to push forward.

It is no coincidence that Nhat Minh’s name features in the Billboard’s Global World Cup Series accompanying the 2026 FIFA World Cup. He approached our conversation with the same unwavering composure he showed at the final whistle of the 2026 AFC U23 Asian Cup third-place playoff. Looking back at that milestone, Nhat Minh retains his signature “cool” demeanor, letting the statistics speak for his extraordinary journey: 600 minutes of unceasing play, six consecutive matches and 16 spectacular clearances against a formidable opponent like South Korea.

His answer to our first question perfectly describes how he plays football. No goals scored, no flashy plays making the headlines. But every time he appears in the right spot, executes the perfect clearance and holds his position, the entire defense stands firm with him, and the whole squad rediscovers the vital energy needed to press on.

As an athlete, what do you admire most about music artists?

Nhat Minh: I admire how artists ignite passion and captivate their audience. It’s not something just anyone can do. It doesn’t stem from top-tier vocal techniques or the sheer number of hits, but rather from an invisible energy radiating from the stage into the crowd, making emotions swell and making the audience just want to stand up and sing along.

Amidst suffocating pressure, what makes you feel that all your efforts are worth it?

Nhat Minh: Every ounce of effort becomes worthwhile when you look at your own passion, fight for the national colors, strive for the team’s collective success and see the acknowledgment in the eyes of the fans.

A Team Player, Not a Spotlight Seeker

At the 2026 AFC U23 Asian Cup, while the defensive line was decimated by injuries and suspensions, Nhat Minh was the lone pillar standing tall from start to finish, not missing a single minute. This was absolutely no miracle or stroke of luck; it was the result of a physical foundation built through countless unphotographed training sessions and a nerves-of-steel mentality forged through forgotten defeats. He is a player born to belong to the collective, not to chase personal glory.

On match days, what genre of music do you and your teammates usually listen to?

Nhat Minh: Before the match, the whole team and I often turn to fast-paced and upbeat EDM tracks. Music at that moment acts as a catalyst, helping me heighten my focus, cast aside nerves and force my body to fully awaken to reach its peak state. But after leaving the locker room, Quân A.P’s music is what I listen to most to stabilize my mind.

Have you ever watched a World Cup live?

Nhat Minh: Although I am still just a loyal spectator through the small screen, my excitement for the World Cup has never faded. I always follow the matches because the allure of the rolling ball doesn’t just lie in the technicalities, but in the electrifying atmosphere of tens of thousands of people. The feeling of everyone holding their breath together, erupting in shared joy or collective regret — that is a magnificent resonating energy that no technology can replicate.