King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard cancel NYE festival

As expected, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have been forced to cancel their upcoming New Year’s Eve festival due to COVID-19.

With the amount of COVID cases in Victoria swiftly on the rise, the band have cancelled Timeland, citing the potential negative health effects as the reason. The festival was set to take place in regional Victoria just a few days from now, from Friday, December 31st until noon on Sunday, January 2nd.

“It is with great sadness that we announce today that BOOGIE PRESENTS KING GIZZARD’S TIMELAND is cancelling,” they wrote in an email sent to ticketholders. “The event planned for Our Friend’s Farm in Tallarook in Victoria will no longer take place.

We do not feel it is safe for artists, crew and staff, vendors and ticket buyers to perform, work, service and attend without a significant risk to either their personal health or those they come into contact with, and their immediate future for life, work and travel post event.”

The band also discussed the layers of difficulty that would have been involved in continuing to push ahead with the festival: “The risk of ticketed buyers, staff and artists being contacted prior to, and during the event as a close or casual contact and having to isolate by not attending or leaving the site, as well as anyone testing positive and not being able to attend the event just bring up too many complexities for the event to continue.”

All ticket holders will be able to access refunds from today onwards, and they’ll also be offered the opportunity to join an exclusive pre-sale for King Gizz’s farewell show which is scheduled to take place in Melbourne early next year.

King Gizz were set to play for six hours across four separate sets at Timeland. They invited along a great lineup of other artists for the occasion, including producer Harvey Sutherland, singer-songwriter Grace Cummings, South Sudan “King of Music” Gordon Koang, and rockers Stonefield.