King Parrot On Tour…

‘We just did Gold Coast and Brisbane and it was awesome. We had a really good time, and Brisbane was great last night. The Weedeater boys are having a great time, drinking lots of whiskey and having a blast. The shows have been great and I think tonight’s going to be really good too. So yeah, it’s good. I’m in Newcastle, one of the most beautiful places.’

King Parrot’s Matt Young could be living the dream right now. A headline tour around Australia, a new album in the can soon to see daylight, a twelve month whirlwind tour with Pantera not only in Australia but America and soon in the UK and mainland Europe too. Let’s not forget they are now also immortalized in TV with their music appearing in cartoons. So, when Youngy shows me the beach he’s talking from in Newcastle while on tour, it’s all impressive and having Weedeater along for the Australian tour just tops it off.

‘We’re great friends with those guys. Stylistically the bands work together well too, even though we’re completely different, opposite ends of the spectrum. There’s still a kind of scrappy sound, like we’ve got a similar kind of sound, if that makes sense. A similar approach I guess. We both sound like out of the gutter, maybe different gutters.’

The eleven date tour around the country started earlier this week and covers the breadth of the country with rip roaring, spit in your face, aggressive, humbling for your ego metal. For those who have not seen King Parrot before it can come across as intimidating at first, as the lads leave no stare first in that uncompromising way that you keep looking back and the stare remains. Meanwhile the band tear through a set list that sounds like no other band in the world.

‘I know what I like performance wise. When I want to go and see a band, I like to feel that being threatened and being in your face. They call it in acting ‘breaking the fourth wall’ you know what I mean? Where you get in with the audience and all of that sort of stuff. So that’s always been a big part of the way I’ve performed.’

The boys do have a new album on its way and content will begin to land in your inbox, social media pages and all good information outlets soon. After seven years since the last output, and touring with some the worlds biggest metal bands to their crowds, does this see a different King Parrot arrive?

‘We’ve got a lot tighter, tried a few different things in the studio that we’ve never done before. We worked with a different engineer, which has been great. He’s been awesome. That’s Luke Walton in Melbourne. He’s making a bit of a name for himself at the moment with all the work that he’s been doing. We’ve just done a few different things. We needed to click track on this one, which was something that we’d never done before because we always wanted to maintain that kind of loose punk aesthetic that we’ve had over the years. I think it’s definitely paid dividends in the way the record sounds now. It’s definitely tighter. It’s definitely a lot more together. But I think the beauty of King Parrot is we’ve always kind of sounded like King Parrot from that first record. We’ve got our sound and that’s really cool, we can expand on that from here. We’re always going to sound like us, which is super important. I think it’s really important for a band to have that identity. We have that, which is great.’

Which bring us to the tour next year supporting Pantera in Europe. This after runs with the same giants in the States and here. For a bunch of Aussie larrikins to get such bills is huge, Young himself admitting there was an adjustment needed.

‘We always try and step it up as much as we can, but we’ve also have a staunch approach with regard our sound and style. You don’t compromise on that. It’s more about becoming better at our craft within the scope of what we do. But in terms of playing with those kind of bands, it’s full on. It’s a whole different world. We’re used to playing in clubs where there might be anywhere from a hundred to five hundred or a thousand people or something like that. That’s our bread and butter. Then to play in front of ten to fifteen thousand people every night is a whole other world. It’s kind of bizarre, but you do become comfortable with it. You become comfortable with the way that it sounds and feels on stage. Obviously having a little bit more room to move is always fun and trying to engage that larger audience who are probably unfamiliar. Obviously there’s some people out there that know us, but there’s a lot of people out there that don’t. It’s always interesting with that Pantera audience, it’s probably half of them Pantera is the heaviest thing they’ll listen to. Then the other half was the gateway drug to more extreme metal. We definitely won a lot of them over as well. So it’s just a great experience to be able to do it.’

Europe will include venues such as the famous Wembley Arena however this band are working class, so don’t expect them to actually have days off just because the headliners are.

‘We do I think five or six shows in Europe and then five or six in UK and Ireland. We’re just very, very grateful for the opportunity to be able to do it. Then we’ll add some shows as well when we get the chance to have a day off or whatever, because obviously Pantera won’t play every day. So we’ll get out there and play some smaller club shows on the off days’

By the time, King Parrot’s album drops we will have plenty of content dropping for the keen aficionado to devour.

‘We’ll have a single out early next year. That’s the plan. We’ve been working on a video. We’ve got a few others in the works as well. Going to do a couple live videos and we’ll do a couple of classic King Parrot videos and we’ve got one in the can already, so that’s a good start! So yeah, we’re just working on all that in the background at the moment while we’re on tour, which is tricky. But yeah, we’ll get everything lined up and there’ll be some new music very early next year.’

For a man who snarls, growls and explodes on stage nightly, since the last album Young has become a father, which while it hasn’t mellowed him on stage it has set the stones in place for a post King Parrot career that may surprise you.

‘When we’re at home and stuff, I’ll play acoustic guitar. We sing songs together and stuff like that. I asked her if she’d start a band with me the other day and she said yes. The first song we sung is Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics and she just loves that song at the moment. We listen to that on repeat in the car and I’ve learned how to play it on guitar. I know how to play quite a few Wiggle songs on guitar as well.’

Interview By Iain McCallum

Catch King Parrot on the following dates with Weedeater, Astrodeath & Choof. Tickets HERE…