{"id":4559,"date":"2014-12-16T11:32:55","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T19:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/metalassault.com\/Interviews\/?p=4559"},"modified":"2014-12-16T11:34:25","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T19:34:25","slug":"in-depth-interview-with-king-parrot-frontman-matt-young","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/metalassault.com\/Interviews\/2014\/12\/16\/in-depth-interview-with-king-parrot-frontman-matt-young\/","title":{"rendered":"In-depth Interview With King Parrot Frontman Matt Young"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Andrew Bansal<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Australian grind\/punk outfit King Parrot have been converting large gatherings of first-timers into instant fans on their current North American run as opening act on the ‘Punk Rock But Kinda Not’ tour with Down, Orange Goblin and B’last. The tour visited Los Angeles for a gig downtown at the Wiltern on December 6 2014, and King Parrot’s performance stunned the audience into complete submission. A few hours before he lost his mind and pants on stage, I caught up with vocalist Matt Young to talk about this tour, the Phil Anselmo inspiration, Pantera, touring vehicles, America, future plans, amongst a whole lot of other things. Enjoy this in-depth conversation below and do yourselves a favor by checking out King Parrot the next time they play in a town near you.<\/p>\n

Matt, how are you doing today, man?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m very well, thank you mate! Having a b\u2019laaast! It\u2019s been awesome, man. B\u2019last are playing their first show of the tour tonight too, so that\u2019s going to be good. But we\u2019ve been having a great time touring with Down and Orange Goblin. It\u2019s been great.<\/p>\n

Awesome man, it\u2019s good to have you here. You\u2019ve done a few tours but this one with Down must be the biggest one you\u2019ve done so far.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, that\u2019s right. It\u2019s definitely the biggest one we\u2019ve done. We just feel very lucky and grateful to tour with such a great band. We\u2019ve met the guys a bunch of times over at Soundwave in Australia. We\u2019ve met the guys from Eyehategod a few times as well, so we know Jimmy. There\u2019s always been that sort of mutual respect, even though we\u2019re a new band. I remember the first time when Eyehategod saw us play in Melbourne. They were all standing on the side of the stage and going, \u2018Wow, what the fuck!\u2019 I\u2019ve always been a massive fan of everything that\u2019s come out of New Orleans. So yeah, it\u2019s just awesome and we\u2019re having a really great time. The guys from Orange Goblin are hilarious too and so much fun to be around. We couldn\u2019t ask for a better tour, really.<\/p>\n

Those British dudes sure have a sense of humor.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, exactly, and it\u2019s very similar to ours (laughs). And the chance to play on these huge stages over here in the States, it\u2019s something that\u2019s kind of new to us and we\u2019re really enjoying having that extra bit of space. We\u2019re still getting used to it a little bit but I think it makes the King Parrot show a little bit more fun. It\u2019s kind of crazy in the small venues and everything as well, but playing these venues is much more fun to me. I can run around a bit more, have more freedom, and I really enjoy that.<\/p>\n

Right, I was going to ask you as to how you adjust your show to these big stages. Obviously you\u2019re liking it in terms of having more room to move around.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh yeah, it\u2019s great. We\u2019re just running around and going crazy. We\u2019re like big kids in the playground. It\u2019s awesome (laughs). And it sounds so much bigger and everything\u2019s so much bigger. It\u2019s been cool, and the responses we\u2019ve been getting have been great. Obviously a lot of people wouldn\u2019t have heard of us, specially the Down fans. There\u2019s a few people that have, but certainly most haven\u2019t. We seem to be winning quite a few over, we\u2019re selling a bunch of shirts and records, and we can\u2019t ask for anything more than that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>That\u2019s great, man. Recently you\u2019ve done North American tours with Cattle Decapitation, Vattnet Viskar and Origin, and now it\u2019s Down. They\u2019re four completely different bands. So in that sense you\u2019re doing it right and reaching out to different people every time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, that\u2019s it, man. I think it\u2019s sort of been a testament to the hard work that we\u2019ve been prepared to do and the sacrifices we\u2019ve been prepared to make as a band and as individuals in the band, to commit to the craft. It\u2019s hard for Australian bands to fucking get out of Australia. It really is, financially, and with the strain it puts on your relationships and your family and all that sort of shit back home, because when you come over here you want to spend a lot of time here. You don\u2019t want to come here for just a week or two. To me that\u2019s kind of a waste of time and money. We want to spend at least a month or two months here, touring and doing stuff like that. We\u2019re lucky that we found the guys that committed to doing it, and we\u2019ve been lucky to be given the opportunities that we\u2019ve had so far. I\u2019m on tour with some of my favorite musicians of all time right now. It\u2019s great (laughs).<\/p>\n

I think I saw some pictures on your social media of you hanging out with Phil Anselmo. What was that like?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Phil\u2019s awesome! He\u2019s a huge supporter of King Parrot and he\u2019s really taken us under his wing. He obviously got us on this tour and we\u2019re all great friends. It\u2019s great to have someone of his stature supporting our band. It doesn\u2019t get much better than that for us, really (laughs).<\/p>\n

And obviously you\u2019re seeing Down every night on this tour and you must have seen them before, but did you ever get to see Pantera?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh yeah. Actually a friend of mine I went to the concert with back in 1994 sent me a photo with the ticket stub that he must have found the other day. So yeah, it was in 1994 at a place called Festival Hall in Melbourne, and it was insane. It was one of the first proper metal shows I went to, and the place was totally packed to the rafters. People were just losing their minds, obviously. As a very impressionable 13 year-old, that was the best thing ever for me, sitting at home watching the Vulgar and Cowboys From Hell videos every day after school as a teenager, and getting to see them play live was pretty phenomenal, man. Loved it.<\/p>\n

I never got to see them, but people always tell me that they were the best live band and no one can really beat them at that aspect.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Right! I just think the musicianship in that band was out of control. Whether it\u2019s your thing or not, millions and millions of people loved Pantera and that was definitely the<\/em> band of my generation, probably your generation too. They revolutionized metal to a certain degree, and they were so tight. I think it\u2019s a thing with brothers. I\u2019ve actually played in previous bands before where the guitarist and drummer are brothers. Something about it just locks in, you know. Pantera were a force. It was unbelievable.<\/p>\n

Would you say that whatever you do on stage, vocally and otherwise, is influenced by Phil at least a little bit?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh yeah, I think so, definitely. Phil, and I love stuff like G.G. Allin. Obviously he was what he was and I\u2019m not going to start throwing shit at you or anything like that, but I just like the way he was just out there in people\u2019s faces. Also, Henry Rollins and Jello Biafra. I really love that sort of punk rock approach to being a frontman. There\u2019s a lot of Australian bands that probably didn\u2019t get as much exposure as what I feel they deserved back in the 90s, bands like Damaged and Beanflipper, and there\u2019s another band called Sadistic Execution who were around since the 80s. A lot of Norwegian metal bands were influenced by that, but they are not hugely known, specially over here in the States. But it was just like totally mental. I love that \u2018lose your mind\u2019 sort of approach. That\u2019s what I love to see when I go to see a band. I want to see them just totally lose their shit. And so I think with King Parrot we just try and put on a show that we would fucking really love to see.<\/p>\n

I also like to see bands losing their shit, but without actually<\/em> losing their shit.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, yeah, I\u2019m not going to do that. There\u2019s a line to be drawn, I guess (laughs).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>You mentioned the punk rock thing, which I was going to bring up. This tour fits with its name, \u2018Punk Rock But Kinda Not\u2019 because yourself and B\u2019last bring the punk while Down and Orange Goblin are all about the stoner metal. That\u2019s also good in terms of different audiences.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh yeah, I think so too. I love nothing more than a good mixed bill. To me it feels like a good tour, it just feels right and nothing is really out of place. It feels like the right thing, for some reason, even though the bands are totally different. It seems to be working really well and the chemistry of the tour seems to be doing well.<\/p>\n

As you might know, I just completed a tour with a band that was the opening act. Whenever people are impressed by an opening act they always come up to talk to them and tell them what band they remind them of. What do people tell you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, there\u2019s been a few people who\u2019ve compared us to Righteous Pigs, which is [Napalm Death guitarist] Mitch\u2019s first band. I know Jimmy from Down thinks we sound like them a bit. They\u2019re an awesome band. We\u2019ve been listening to them a bit with Jimmy and it\u2019s really cool. I hadn\u2019t heard much of that stuff before. A few people have also thrown D.R.I. comparisons and stuff like that. I guess there\u2019s that element of what King Parrot sounds like and there\u2019s probably another element of it not being the music, with our videos and the way we interact with the audience and stuff. It\u2019s like a passive aggressive sort of thing. When we\u2019re playing the songs, it kind of comes across as aggressive but then in between the songs it\u2019s probably a little bit more light-hearted and our bass player Slatts considers himself a bit of a comedian (laughs). So, it is what it is, and for some reason the chemistry just works. We just worked hard playing a lot of shows, working on every aspect of the band. We\u2019ve been playing this first album for the best part of a couple of years now, so we\u2019re really looking forward to the next chapter, doing some new videos and working on getting the new album done and moving on from that first record.<\/p>\n

In terms of this tour, how exactly are you touring? In a van or a bus?<\/strong><\/p>\n

You see that Down bus over there? Ours looks nothing like that (laughs). No, we just tour in a van. A 15-seater van with a trailer, stinking it up. It smells terrible with rubbish and shit everywhere. We all just take turns driving. But it\u2019s all good. We\u2019re under no illusions of where we sit in the pecking order (laughs).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But as I just experienced for the first time myself, America is great in terms of the drives. When you go through all these places, everything is so different from each other. What do you think about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh man, it\u2019s amazing to come over here and just tour. In Australia it\u2019s very difficult because there\u2019s six major cities. We do quite a lot of regional shows in the small areas, but here it\u2019s so vast. You go from here, down to Arizona, Nevada and all that sort of shit and then to Texas which is different again, and as soon as you cross that border from Texas to Louisiana, it changes as well. And then all up the East Coast too. We\u2019ve done four North American tours this year and we\u2019ve seen heaps of it, and it\u2019s just amazing. It\u2019s incredible and we just feel so lucky that we get the opportunity to see the country and play. We even got a spend a bit of time up in Vermont in between the Origin tour and the last short tour we did just before this one. We spent a month in Vermont with some friends of ours and wrote our new album up there in the barn up in the woods, and it\u2019s just a beautiful part of the world out there. I kind of understood why they call it New England because it reminded me a lot of England. I love being over here. Australia is cool and everything, but it\u2019s very small in the sense that people just live up on the east coast, then there\u2019s a huge desert and a few people on the west coast. There\u2019s not heaps going on, whereas in America it just feels like there\u2019s so much going on all the time. It\u2019s really good for us as a band to be here. It makes a lot more sense for us to be here than in Australia (laughs).<\/p>\n

Finally, after this tour what do you have coming up? More touring and a new album?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Right, we\u2019re going to record the new album in January and then we\u2019re going home for a month. We\u2019re going to take some time, doing a new video and then hopefully coming back in March to do a tour. We\u2019ll probably play some shows in Australia when we\u2019re back there. I think we\u2019ll put out the new album in the mid-year or something around that. We haven\u2019t set a date yet but we\u2019re recording soon and we\u2019re really excited about that. We really believe in the new songs we\u2019ve written. I think they\u2019re much more mature and the songwriting is much better than what we did on the first record. Those songs were the very first shit we ever wrote and it got to the point where it was cool but I just think now we\u2019re in a much better place after playing however many shows we\u2019ve played in the last couple of years, may be 300 or 400 shows. We\u2019re just a much better band now, much tighter with each other, and we just recently got Todd Hansen who\u2019s been playing drums for us now for the last 3 or 4 months. He was in a band called The Berzerker who you might have heard of, the band on Earache. He\u2019s played in a lot of other bands too. We\u2019ve had issues with drummers in the past. Todd\u2019s our fourth drummer in the past couple of years, but we feel like we\u2019ve locked in with him and he gets along well with everyone in the band. He loves touring, and so do we. It\u2019s just perfect and we\u2019re all ready to go at the drop of a hat. We\u2019re stoked on the new songs and everything\u2019s going along good at the moment.<\/p>\n

Related: Gig Review: Down, Orange Goblin, B’last & King Parrot Conquer Los Angeles<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

King Parrot links:\u00a0facebook<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0twitter<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0instagram<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Remaining Tour Dates:<\/strong>
\n12\/17\/2014\u00a0Summit Music Hall \u2013 Denver, CO
\n12\/19\/2014\u00a0Diamond Ballroom \u2013 Oklahoma City, OK
\n12\/20\/2014\u00a0Gas Monkey Live \u2013 Dallas, TX
\n12\/21\/2014\u00a0Warehouse Live \u2013 Houston, TX<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Andrew Bansal Australian grind\/punk outfit King Parrot have been converting large gatherings of first-timers into instant fans on their current North American run as opening act on the ‘Punk Rock But Kinda Not’ tour with Down, Orange Goblin and B’last. The tour visited Los Angeles for a gig downtown at the Wiltern on December … <\/p>\n

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