King Parrot ‘A Young Persons Guide To King Parrot’

From the first distorted guitar riff to the final crash of the cymbal, King Parrot’s extremely long awaited follow up album A Young Persons Guide To King Parrot is exactly what it states.

Furious blast beats, dirty diarrhoea inducing breakdowns and a venomous vocal delivery that has spit spewing from your speakers.

Opening with Get What You’re Given and Fuck You And The Horse Your Rode In On – tracks that have been sprinkled in the live set for the last twelve months – tells you what mood they’ve turned up in.

GWYG is a sharp razor attack followed by a battering ram of a groove while FYATHYRIO is one hundred miles an hour, head banging, dandruff shaking, middle finger anthem that slows into a smooth groove and guitar weave. Well, smooth for King Parrot, Eric Clapton this ain’t.

While they are hard to pin into a genre – is it grindcore, punk, metal? – one element that is unequivocal, is they are Australian. How am I to explain to my friends and family overseas what exactly is Cunning As A Dunny Rat other than just turn up the song and hang onto something so you don’t get blown away.

It’s A Rort is more like a riot. A brawl with chairs being smashed, punches thrown and you’re left with a bloody nose. The first half is frantic while the second half, oh that glorious second half, slows and the build up will cause an earthquake in every town played with the anthemic chant left ringing in your ears.

The hardest thing for a ghastly, aggressive collective on stage to do is bring that electric energy to record and King Parrot do. Punish The Runt mixes cool guitar work with a hammer to the head vocally while Target Pig Elite is the equivalent of fifteen red bulls and being told to calm down. The fuck you are when that bass starts.

I have coined this album as akin to finding old food at the bottom of your bag on a warm day on a previous post because it is. It’s not designed to be a top ten smash hit. It’s designed to confront you. To show you the world we live in. It’s designed to speak to you and your struggle through the shitstorm that is this world. It’s unapologetic about that.

I Got The Right, a wild bronco of a song, the guitar work again is sublime, flows into Look Away I’m Hideous, a hungry, rising from hibernation grizzly bear which has the hallmarks of a live classic.

Glazed And Diseased In Defeat haunts, a manic feel of sliding away into madness and despair before Pissing On The Fist Of The Law crushes like a doom track. Well doom for King Parrot.

Eight years since the last album and this album – coined after a sadly departed close friends drawing of the band – is a perfect representation of King Parrot.. Uncompromising, ugly, brutal, direct and with plenty of neck breaking riffs and breakdowns to keep the chiropractor in business. As the chant goes in It’s A Rort, ‘When the going gets tough, you can go and get fucked.’

Album Review By Iain McCallum

A Young Person’s Guide To King Parrot is out Friday 6 June. Pre-Order HERE…