KING PARROT - GIG REVIEW
- Kaylah Chilcott
- Jun 11, 2025
- 5 min read
Fun loving and crowd breaking King Parrot are on the road again for their new album, A Young Person’s Guide to King Parrot, and they’re ready to pulverise minds and bodies Australia wide.
They played a chilly Friday night at The Royal Oak in Launceston, with openers Eaten By Rats and Hobart’s own Psycroptic. With popular heavy metal acts in Launceston are few and far between, so the crowd was out and ready to give everything up for a good show - literally.
Due to the venue’s pokey walkways and spacing, I did miss the start of Eaten By Rats as getting into the venue was slow. It was a decent crowd who had made it in to watch their set, Launnie can be pretty bad at catching only who they want to see - leaving early and arriving late so they can slink back to their holes. Eaten By Rats didn’t take themselves too seriously, clad in black hoodies and the vocalist in sunnies, pumping out older school death metal. It took on a slower pace, which I appreciated and it was easy to bop along to their riffs, while dynamic drumming kept the crowd engaged. It was certainly an enjoyable way to slip into a night that would soon be filled to the brim with crowd surfers and extreme metal musicians.
I’ve seen Psycroptic once before, and damn, I forget they are so talented.
Vocalist Jason Peppiatt’s stage presence had the whole room beneath his thrall, he said “crowd surf” and they crowd surfed, he said “circle pit” and they were headless chooks. With so many other bands, this would usually fall apart after a few verses, but they would not stop until the band did. After their opener, the crowd seemed to lose their mind more with each song - wave after wave of crowd surfers trying their luck on the barrierless pit. I was becoming concerned they would run out of steam before King Parrot would make it on.
Psycroptic are quite technical in their writing, and the biggest thing I noticed from them was how locked in Joe and Dave Haley were. While the vocalist cut sick, the brothers were intently focusing on their craft. Bassist, Todd Stern, seemed to snap in and out of it, though he and Peppiatt provided us with suuuuuper satisfying windmills to make any metalhead’s heart sing.
They used a couple of backing tracks in parts of their set, their ferocious and technical music is demanding, so it let the fellas rest before locking back into their next brutal riff. ‘Frozen Gaze’ was a stand out for myself, but we also heard their latest single ‘Architects of Extinction’, ‘Rend Asunder’, and ‘Enslavement’.
Psycroptic are still on the road and heading off to Europe in July, tickets available Here. If you can catch them, I can guarantee you’ll be stunned by the pure talent and musicianship they have to offer.
King Parrot has to be one of the most animated live acts I’ve seen in a long time, starting with Slatts, in true Parrot fashion, jaunting on stage before tearing his shirt off. They opened up ‘The Stench of Hardcore Pub Trash’, which felt very fitting for the cretins who had not made their way back from the smokers yet. Mathew Young’s eyes were about to eject themselves from his skull as he screeched into his mic, a very far departure from the man I had met a few hours earlier.
This was my first King Parrot show, so I was expecting there to be punters cartwheeling across the crowd and the roof to cave in. While they weren’t as active as Psycroptic’s crowd, they were just as dedicated, hanging over the front of the stage, hands and fists crashing down on every beat, Youngy asking them not to “break [his] shit”.
They are absolutely captivating on stage, I thought with how aggressive and fast their music could be, that we wouldn’t see too much movement out of Slatts, Mr White or Squizz, but they rarely had a still moment, often dancing around each other without missing a beat. Slatts even graced us with some slam poetry between songs - which was agreed to be Launceston’s version of Dark Mofo. The banter playing out on stage was hilarious, in line with the humour we have come to expect from them - I’m sure I’ve seen the ‘Shit On The Liver’ film clip at least a hundred times.
While drummers are usually punted to the back of the stage and can be hard to observe, Max Dangerfield was impressive to watch and has done a wicked job at learning King Parrot’s older tracks as well as their new ones. The speed and intensity in which the drums were written makes this no easy feat. Squizz was in his own corner, hair like a fairy floss machine gone crazy, playing with no shoes, which is one of the most unhinged things I’ve ever seen at a show.
Their set list surprised me - nearly half of it coming from Bite Your Head Off. In fairness, that album holds up fantastically 13 years later and many songs have become Australian metal classics. I thought ‘Shit On The Liver’ would be the finale, but it was played about half way through, with their set closing with ‘Fuck You And The Horse You Rode In On’ off the new album. ‘Fuck You...’ is a great candidate for their most aggressive and crowd animating song, with every middle finger in the pit up for it, advancing on the stage and giving every ounce of remaining energy into the anthem.
King Parrot sure as hell knows how to put on a fantastic live show, whether you’re an old fan or new, you won’t be bored for a single moment. Easily one of the best bands you have the chance to catch this year. Mathew Young is one of the most formidable front men I’ve ever seen, and they love to have fun among themselves and their crowd. if you cheer “one more song”, you might be lucky enough to catch some cheek - even luckier and you might touch it.
King Parrot’s tour continues on the 20th at the Brunswick Ballroom, click HERE to see when they’re destroying a venue near you!
A Young Person's Guide To King Parrot is out now on all streaming platforms!
