Flying High

"We still get people bringing jars of Bonox to gigs and we have to sign them, all that sort of shit. I think the joke will go on for quite some time, and that's totally cool with us,” King Parrot's vocalist Matt 'Youngy' Young reckons.

After 100,000 views, Shit On The Liver has made King Parrot a veritable viral sensation, equal parts Psy and Psycroptic in its mixture of quotability and brutal Aussie extreme tunes. According to Youngy though, all the band's done for Bonox has fallen upon deaf corporate ears.

“Fuckin' arseholes. They dissed us,” the vocalist laughs. “I wrote a letter to Kraft and said, 'Check the video out, we're definitely helping increase Bonox sales here, we should come up with something' and they flat out ignored me. So there's been no love from the people who make Bonox, but I think we'll get over it…. I mean, hey, if trucks of money were to pull up outside the practice space, we'd let them in. But otherwise we're happy to just play heaps of shows, sell heaps of merch, just keep doing our thing. We won't be taking any shortcuts, and we don't need any favors from Kraft, I don't think.”

The band's run of success following Bite Your Head Off is proof of their ability to do it all by themselves. One of the most auspicious debuts the Australian underground has seen in recent years, the album transformed the fates of King Parrot.

“I think it certainly exceeded our expectations in terms of the response the album's gotten in Australia as well as in America and Europe. We still consider ourselves a new band, it's probably only been a couple of years of touring. It doesn't seem like that long ago that we were paying a fortune to try and play interstate, and playing to no one. We expected that, as you do as a new band. But then we didn't expect this really rapid rise; we put in a lot of hard work, but we're stoked that it's taking off.”

Bolstering the success of the album with a heavy schedule of touring, King Parrot have spent the last nine months cementing themselves in the upper echelons of the Australian underground.

“We were really aware at last year's Bastardfest how this was going to be a great time to make an impression and push the record, and I think it did that,” Youngy continues. “We quickly backed that up with another tour in January. Then we went overseas and played Indonesia, that was really cool, and then we came back and concentrated on doing some touring in places we hadn't got to so we did some regional stuff, and now we've just done the Thy Art is Murder tour with Cattle Decapitation and Aversions Crown which was amazing. The shows were massive; all bar a couple were sold out. For us, it's just gradually gotten cooler.”

After all their recent touring, King Parrot still have a couple of 'cool' tricks up their sleeve for Brisbane fans; they're returning as one of the headliners of this year's Dead Of Winter festival and playing main support to Aussie legends Psycroptic in early August. After all the touring they've done in support of the record, Youngy reckons that the band has discovered what they want to do with their shows. “We want to have fun with it. If we weren't having fun we wouldn't be doing the band. If we were doing it for money we certainly wouldn't be doing it either. Really, this band is a great way to spend your time.”

To keep everything fun – especially now that a successful record has mandated that they're regularly coming through the same towns – what does the band do to keep fans interested and engaged in a King Parrot performance?

“We basically stick to the same formula for every show; just to put on the most intense, energetic and full-on show. We always try and pump as much energy into it while keeping it fun, just amusing and entertaining. That's a big thing about the band; that we can have this full-on energy and play brutal music, but then we can also take it to this other place where it's funny and entertaining.

“But that being said, just with what I'm doing onstage, jumping into the crowd and crowdsurfing, it just kind of lends itself to random shit happening. I mean I've had audience members punching me in the face while I'm crowdsurfing, I've been glassed, I've had people waiting for me outside of the gig waiting to fight. I guess some people don't get it, but the way we go about our show just lends itself to never being the same two times.”

That spontaneity and craziness seems entirely apt for an extreme metal show. But Youngy's still got to get out of the venue alive, so he's had to curtail some of the activities he favoured back in the day when the band released The Stench of Hardcore Pub Trash EP.

“When we first started, I would go up to those people [standing behind the mosh pit] and knock the beers out of their hands to get a reaction,” he laughs, “and that didn't go so well so I stopped doing that. But I still want to try to bring people into the performance and make everyone a part of it.”

While King Parrot continue to terrorise Aussie stages, Youngy admits that they're looking to push their tunes overseas and they're testing the international water with the Shit On The Liver video. Even if the band don't really find the video that funny anymore, they still appreciate what it's done, and how it's a metaphor for the band's individuality.

“It's really been invaluable to us, and I think it will continue to be. People are still seeing it for the first time now. And it's being launched overseas at the moment, it's getting pushed out around the place and we're getting some good feedback. So it's good to see that the Australian sense of humor can branch out to other cultures.

“King Parrot has always had our own style going on. We're not specifically grindcore, thrash, punk or whatever, we want to be unique and have our own take on it, and I guess the video was representation of that.”