Go on a deep dive into King Parrot's Instagram with frontman Matt Young

Melbourne thrash-punk heroes King Parrot are about to round out 2017 in typically devastating fashion with another huge Australian tour, kicking off in Perth at Badlands on December 13 and hitting all the cap cities from then on. To mark this momentous and mad occassion, KP frontman Matt Young has taken us for a little deep via Instagram of their recent tour in the UK, offering some ~exclusive~ insight into life on the road for the band, including why they can't just have @kingparrot as their Instagram name. Check it out below, along with that full run of dates down the bottom:

King Parrot's Tour Instagram Explained...

When we first started King Parrot and we were setting up social media, pretty much everything that was just kingparrot was gone, so we decided on @kingparrotband. Unfortunately the above user has barely even used their Instagram account and people looking for us probably come across this and just give up or piss themselves laughing. kingparrot.com is some Asian food company, and there's also another company that makes cots for babies called King Parrot. We always get photos from people when they drive past King Parrot Creek too. In 50 years we might claim that they named it after us lol.

There comes a time on most tours when my shoes become just far too much to handle. The combination of getting drenched every night, attempting to the dry them out, and then putting them through the rigors of being walked around whatever city we're in, then another show of getting drenched and repeating that for months at a time is conducive to some of the most pungent smells. On this occasion towards the end of our recent UK tour, we decided enough was enough.

Seeing as though we get some pretty strange characters at King Parrot shows, we thought we'd try and get a quid for them. Unfortunately there were no takers on this occasion and the poor old hikers were left by a dumpster in the back streets of Wolverhampton. 

This guy is our buddy Ryan. We met him in Europe last year when we were on tour with Obituary, Exodus and Prong. We shared a bus with Prong on that particular tour and Ryan was a roadie for Prong. Being a spritely young English lad we instantly made good friends with him and he lent us a hand on that tour many times. When we found out we were going back to the UK we decided that if he was available, he had to come on the road with us. He doubles as a roadie, drum tech, lighting guy, and merch salesman extraordinaire. The young bastard is only 21 too. He has shocking hair, but we love him and he has proved invaluable to us in recent times.

Isn't it great that we have another massive heavy music festival coming to Australia. Of course there’s always a bunch of backlash about the lineup and people whinging about this and that, but we are absolutely honored to be a part of it. I went to Download in the UK in 2005 and saw the original lineup of Black Sabbath rock the place, and it was one of my favourite festival experiences of all time.

We've got the opportunity here to get behind something massive, and it's great it's in the right hands to build up in Australia. There's a bit of something for everyone, some of my favourite bands are playing like Nails and Mastodon and my mates bands like Psycroptic and Clowns are playing too. It's going to be an awesome way to kick off Download in Australia! 

Selling merch is a necessary evil these days and something that all bands must do if they want to make a go of it. Luckily for King Parrot we have embraced this and from the humble beginnings of having 20 shirts made up that we all chipped in for, I can safely say that we have sold well in excess of 10,000 shirts in the last five years.

One of my favorite things is when people come up and say "How big is your Large?" I instantly start laughing, its fucking hilarious. How fucking big do you think the Large is? About as big as every other fucking Large t-shirt you've ever bought!

Contending with drunk people resting their drinks on the merch table, while they try on a hoodie and spill shit everywhere while completely dismantling your display of trinkets on the display table is another of my pet hates. DO NOT FUCK WITH THE MERCH TABLE!

Trump's America... I don't think it is that much different to the America that was their previous. Apart from people now feel the need to have massive Trump stickers on the back of their trucks! A lot of hard work goes into trying to get a Visa to play in the US, and that part is probably what sucks most for me. Other than that, it's still pretty much the same. Most of the people are really awesome, the food is pretty bad, the roads are are bumpy, the coffee is nasty but it is the most unique and beautiful and scarily horrifying place in the world.

In Worcester Massachussets we were lucky enough to meet Tim Morse who is the drummer from possibly the world’s most notorious band, Anal Cunt. They aren't around anymore as their vocalist/songwriter Seth passed away in 2011. It was completely bizarre for me to meet someone from that band as I had known of them since I was a teenager and they were always the most hilarious and ridiculous death metal band to come out of the scene in the US in the 90s.

Whilst bands like Cannibal Corpse and Morbid Angel were being all serious and evil, A.C. were just taking the piss and having a laugh, being offensive for the sake of it and having a great time while doing it. Tim stood at the front of the stage for our entire set that night and went crazy, he loves grindcore and he really went nuts for King Parrot. I was fanboying out pretty hard that night, and I now stay in touch with him regularly. He has a killer band called called Horrible Earth. Go check it out!

TOUR DATES:

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