Kingcrimsonprog To say I was highly anticipating this album would be something of an understatement. Australian metalcore turned stadium band Parkway Drive’s 2015 album Ire had been my album of the decade, their 2018 album Reverence was a very strong follow-up, and when I saw them live it was and remains to this day, the (no exaggeration) best concert I have ever seen. Better than Rammstein, Alice Cooper, Slipknot, Ghost, Tool or any other famously good live band I’ve ever got a chance to see. Since those two concerts I saw from that tour (one at Download Festival and one in Cardiff headlining) my estimation of the band has only been higher and higher over time.

When I heard the first single from this album, “Glitch,” I was a bit underwhelmed to be honest, but then the second single “The Greatest Fear” got me properly excited, and having listened to “Glitch” so many times since then, I actually really like it now too.

Now, realistically, I can never expect this album to be as good as Ire, literal album of the entire decade, but if they could make something even half as good as Reverence then I’d still be a very happy customer, and it would still be an album of the year contender. The first time I listened to the record in full, it didn’t totally land with me. Part of that was my fault, I rushed in right as it came out, listening to it for a song or two in the shower, then a song or two when I was getting ready for work and the kids were screaming, and then listening to the rest at work in one earphone only whilst preoccupied.

My initial gut reaction was something along the lines of “Oh, they’ve gone too clean, too commercial, too stadium and the good bits of Nu Metal that they’d mixed into the last two albums have been replaced with the bad bits of Nu Metal.” However, I’d paid for it, so I was damn well going to listen to it again and again, in all sorts of different conditions, walking, driving, working, resting, on in the background and hyper focused.

…Well, I’m glad I put the effort in and didn’t go off my initial disappointed reaction, because this album is a delight. Its definitely more of a grower and a slow burn than the instant gratification of Deep Blue or Ire, and its less an obvious natural progression than Reverence was, but the more you listen to it, the more you see why this was absolutely the right album for them to make.

There’s no getting away from it, Parkway Drive are a massive band now, who play big stages to big crowds, and they just couldn’t get away with Killing With A Smile-level heaviness anymore… it just wouldn’t sound right on those big stages. While my initial assessment that this album is cleaner and more commercial than previous records, and that there are more touches of Nu Metal in the sound, it is in all the right ways. This album is an album to jump up and down to, an album to sing along to, an album to have a good time with, an album that sounds like a party, perfect fodder for big concert fun. The songs are deliberately designed to worm their way into your memory and make you want to move.

I wouldn’t say its been dumbed down, its been stream-lined for maximum fist pumping. Songs like “Soul Bleach” and “Like Napalm” just feel good. Dynamic, catchy, crunchy and bouncy. ‘Napalm also has some really tasty lead guitar lines that would feel at home on a European heavy metal festival. I love how Parkway mix that element in more and more as their albums go on.

Its not all festival bopping bouncy fun though. The album does feature some diversity, a few slower more contemplative, darker moments. There are strings, moody moments and a touch of class. The title track is quite understated and subtle (well, at least until the huge November Rain music video mountain top style guitar solo bursts out), and the closer “From The Heart Of Darkness” tries to be a hybrid of the heavy and quiet ones and succeeds really well, with the violins adding a really triumphant feel.

I could talk for hours about this album, but at the end of the day, I think the take home message of the entire review is going to be, “don’t listen to your cynical first impressions, just let it wash over you, accept it for what it is, and with repeat listens it will seriously frow on you.” I really love it now. I find myself singing “Imperial Heretic” in the shower or when doing the dishes without even realising it.

Kingcrimsonprog For their sixth studio album, Parkway Drive had a hell of a lot to live up to. After absolutely perfecting their formula with the popular Horizons and Deep Blue albums, and utterly reinventing themselves on the astounding Ire album, the Australians would have a hard time releasing anything that good. What should they do? Return to the old formula? Try and repeat the triumph of Ire?

What they decided to do was a bit different. On Atlas, the great but less-popular follow up to Deep Blue they decided to try and balance their formula with new ideas like choirs, strings and DJ scratching with more variety of fasts and slows. The band weren’t going to limit themselves or stay in their own little box, they already did the perfect version, so its time to try some new ideas.

Reverence, to me, feels to Ire as Atlas did to Deep Blue. Its not a rehash of the past formula but a pushing of the envelope. Its taking that general idea but broadening it. There’s some pretty inventive and new sounds for Parkway on this album, from quiet spoken word bits, no almost Ghost-eque latin sounding chants (‘I Hope You Rot’), and film-score sounding orchestration. And while Atlas all sounded cataclysmic like a disaster movie, Reverence sounds epic and biblical.

Musical direction is one thing, but of course its all for nothing if the quality isn’t there. Fortunately Revereance is not only interesting, but it is also excellent. There are some absoltuely fantastic songs, amazingly catchy choruses and damn enjoyable guitar lines. There’s parts that’ll stick in your head for days (‘I’ve got the whole world swinging from the end of a chain,’ gets me every time). Some of those drum fills and leads are demading of a good air-instrumenting. Some of these songs will utterly crush live!

If you only want Parkway at their absolute heaviest and don’t want any clean singing, or any atypical instrumentation, then maybe chose a different album as your first. If you like the band, especially the shift in direction that started with Ire, then you don’t want to be missing out on Reverance. It is one hell of a record, strong all the way through, creative, interesting and thoroughly entertaining.

Highlights include the single ‘Wishing Wells’ as well as ‘Shadow Boxing’ and the dark ‘The Colour Of Leaving’

Its too early yet to rank it in their discography, but I can tell you right away from first impressions it certainly aint in trouble of being in the bottom half. I got this on release day (for some reason it was signed, which didn’t cost any extra, hooray!) and have absolutely pasted it every since. I can listen to this five times in a row and not be sick of it. It is a truly joyous album. If you are a fan don’t hesitate, get in on this ASAP.

Kingcrimsonprog Man, this album was a big surprise. Australian Metalcore band Parkway Drive had been releasing consistent, easily identifiable records with a definite style that they wouldn’t deviate from too much, they had a style that they worked within and had absolutely perfected.

With their fifth full-length studio album, Ire, Parkway’ take their rulebook and throw it to the wind. This is the biggest stylistic shake-up in the band’s history by a country mile. This album is fresh, exciting, radically different than what’s came before. Its such a big difference that you can almost expect the cries of “sell out!” to slither out of your speakers themselves. The thing is, this doesn’t feel like a sell-out, its just an invigoration, a refreshening, and a new twist on things.

There are some seriously different atmospheres and a very different vibe to it than you may have been used to before. The songs are brighter, catchier, more sing-along focused, there are more concert-baiting backing vocals, there’s more stomps and clap noises and there’s way more melody. It is a strange mixture of the band going in a Traditional Heavy Metal or Power Metal route… with much more bright major-key dual guitar melodies, as well as going in a groove or almost Nu Metal direction, with almost rapped vocals and some seriously rhythmic music. Its like constantly flipping between Machine Head’s The Burning Red and then The Blackening, with Parkway Drive’s masterpiece Deep Blue being interjected every so often. Imagine Parkway Drive covering Five Finger Death Punch and Iron Maiden in a medley – that’s a vague ballpark of the sort of directions this experimental album almost evokes, if not actually sounds directly like.

In terms of musicianship Parkway have always been excellent but the virtuosity on show here is next-level. Vocally, this is the most melodic and expressive Winston McCall has ever been. Lyrically, this album is continuing on from their previous album Atlas, but sounding even more vital, important and interesting without ever feeling preachy or finger-wagging.

Its almost difficult to call out stand-out moments, because every song is different than the last, there’s so much going on, so many songs that would be the best song on their peer’s album, so many moments that rip a huge smile across my face, that the album as a whole is just astounding.

At the time of writing, my favourite songs might just be the absolutely anthemic feel-good tune ‘Vice Grip’ which sounds like the final scene in a sports movie, the massive groovey rhythmic scream-along ‘Crushed’ which feels like it was written in 1999, and ‘Vicious’ which has the best guitar of Parkway’s career to date – and when Winston starts going on about burning it all to ash, you feel where he’s coming from.

If you thought Parkway Drive were just going to rehash old ideas, you thought wrong, variety is the key theme here. Interestingly though, they’ve managed this without compromising themselves, it still sounds unmistakably like Parkway Drive. It is little touches they’ve done before stretched out to whole songs, or traditionally Parkway sounding bits but with bongos underneath, or just focusing on one element of their sound more than others.

Overall; If you are deathly afraid of melody, catchiness, or hand-claps…and you don’t want anything on your music to sound any fun then by all means avoid this album… but for everyone else, Parkway’ have released a game changing, barn-storming, absolute rager here, and if you like this sort of music at all you seriously need to check it out.

Kingcrimsonprog Parkway Drive are an Australian Metalcore band (who call themselves a Hardcore Band) from the beautiful Byron Bay area, notable for their unconventionally interesting travelogue-esque documentary releases. 2012’s Atlas is their fourth full-length studio album. It was produced by Matt Hyde and released on Epitah Records.

If you aren’t familiar with the band they may initially appear to lack a clear identifying hook or quirk to differentiate themselves from all the other Metalcore bands out there. If you only heard six seconds of music for example you may not be instantly able to tell that its specifically Parkway Drive and not someone else. If you hear an entire song or album however it will probably become clear that Parkway Drive’s real selling point however is that they simply do it so very, very well.

Besides a signature standard of quality, the band have always had a signature sound that they largely stick within (much like AC/DC, Slayer, Hatebreed or Killswitch Engange do) and like all of their albums before, the majority of the music on Atlas is no grand departure from the type of music that you would expect the band to play.

The band evolve slowly from album to album, as opposed to suddenly being a Jazz band on one album and then playing a mixture of Country Music and Black Metal on the next. The good thing about this is that if you like what they do, you get more of it. The bad thing is that if you are sick of it, you get more of it, and it’ll take a few albums until the sound has evolved enough to be considered notably different.

Whether you view it as staying true to their core ideals or a lack of variety will ultimately depend on you. Personally, I’m happy with the band’s ratio of evolution and stylistic-stability. On this album, tracks like ‘Swing,’ ‘Dark Days’ and ‘Sleight Of Hand’ are all examples of exactly what Parkway Drive do best and any one of them would serve as a fine introduction to the band for a newcomer or reaffirmation for an existing fan.

The same syncopated double-kicks are there, the same breaks of effects-laden clean guitar are there, the same mix of shouts and death vocals (and notable absence of commercial sounding radio-friendly clean choruses) from frontman Winston McCall are there and the same crunchy, low-pitched rhythmic breakdowns are there as always. There are also some sections of gang-chanting backing vocals here and there and intermittent touches of lead guitar and a small amount of blast beats as usual.

Within that familiar sound however; Atlas can still provide a few surprises, most notably on the Title Track which features a string section, on ‘The River’ which has female vocals briefly and on ‘The Slow Surrender’ which is uncharacteristically structured, comparatively slow and features turntable scratching.

Some fans may reject the additions or cry sell out, but at the end of the day as long as you are a Parkway Drive fan to begin with, all that should matter is whether or not the songs are any good, and luckily they are good. Very good indeed.

There are some seriously great riffs, memorable vocal patterns, fun tom-rolls and catchy breakdowns on this album and practically no song is devoid of something to make you grin, filled as they are with little touches like hitting the bell on the ride at a certain point or ending a riff with a vibrato. The sort of thing that you pick up on with repeat listens and grow to love.

Overall; As long as you like the band to begin with and haven’t got tired their formula yet then you’ll probably love Atlas. It is a well constructed, excellently produced collection of yet more Parkway Drive songs to enjoy. There may be some debate within the fanbase as to exactly where this ranks against other Parkway Drive albums but regardless of the outcome of that debate, it is still undoubtedly a very good album that you should absolutely consider adding to your collection.

Kingcrimsonprog Deep Blue was released in 2010 by Australian Metalcore act Parkway Drive, it was their third full-length studio album and the fan-anticipation surrounding its release was immense.

The album marks a shift in production style for the band as production was not handled by Adam D (of Killwitch Engage) for the first time on a full-length Parkway Drive album. Musically, The band concentrate on the heavier side of their sound, especially favoring their breakdowns and big riffs, which results in a very direct and hard sounding album full of very solid and well constructed songs following a pretty strict musical formula.

The album is a real grower and repeat listens really bring out all the character and little touches. The whole album flows pretty well and each song boasts some some vocal chant that will be stuck in your head for a long time. The real standout tracks are the single ‘Sleepwalker,’ the catchy ‘Home Is For The Heartless,’ and the absolutely gigantic sounding ‘Deadweight,’ which features one of the best breakdowns on the whole album.

If you were being unkind you could call the album one-dimensional but the band also include a few their contemplative passages and technical sections to break up the barrage of aggression and additionally the album is conceptual in nature with the songs all unified by shared lyrical ideas (telling the story of a disillusioned man attempting to find understanding by venturing under the sea only to return to where he started) and both these elements inject enough creativity into the mix to make the album stand out from the crowd as a great record, even among other Parkway Drive albums.

Interestingly for a concept album, Deep Blue is remarkably music-focused and the narrative doesn’t interrupt or overwhelm the music at any point. Its not so much a rock opera with non-musical dialogue and sound effects as an album that just ended up telling a story. It can stand on its own as a set of tight, independent songs or you can sit down with the lyrics and enjoy it with a hidden extra layer of depth and both ways work equally well.

The more you listen to it the more you realize that Deep Blue is an almost flawless album and the only thing that could really be considered wrong with it, is if you already don’t like or have heard too much of the style of music that the band play. While Parkway Drive do not break huge amounts of new ground however, what they do, they do very well indeed. Parkway Drive have Metalcore down to a science and with their rejection of clean vocals altogether, still have something new to offer to metal fans who dislike or have grown tired of the over-saturated clean/light Metalcore sound. You can’t realistically accuse them of ripping off Killswitch Engage exclusively if they don’t employ the same giant clean choruses, arguably the biggest factor in the Killswitch sound.

Overall; the quality of the music speaks for itself and I if you are a fan of the genre, Deep Blue is definitely an album you need to be listening to. It is tight, confident and perfectly formed.