Metal For All

19 June 2014 | 4:20 pm | Benny Doyle

"This is going to be a hell of a lot different."

More Parkway Drive More Parkway Drive

They might be “sticking out really badly” on this year's Groovin The Moo, but Parkway Drive are revelling in their role says Winston McCall. The frontman phones The Music at the travelling event's halfway point, and although he still hasn't had a chance to see The Jezabels and Dizzee Rascal like he wanted to, he admits it's been one of the best festival experiences he's ever had.

The quintet are also getting familiar with fellow GTM acts The Jungle Giants, Allday and Violent Soho, who they'll be sharing a stage with once more at underage extravaganza Live It Up. McCall is aware that, like Groovin The Moo, most fans in the crowd won't have ever seen Parkway Drive live, but he encourages the youngsters getting along to embrace the energy with open arms.

“Production budgets may vary but intensity levels remain the same,” he says of a Parkway Drive set. “The experience you're going to get is the same no matter what is behind us flashing or falling over or exploding; [we] play the exact same whether it's [to] five or 5000 people.

“A lot of people [now] discount how much it means to see a band live because you can just watch it on YouTube, but actually being there in person is completely different, and the impact it has is completely different,” McCall stresses. “You go to your first gig and there's no way in hell you're saying, 'I'd rather watch this on YouTube.' Once you experience a band live you will not want to see it any other way again.”

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Champions of the all ages scene after earning their stripes putting on now-legendary shows around Byron Bay a decade ago, McCall remembers the first gig that most of the band went to – Warped '98 – as the turning point. He says that witnessing US punk acts like Pennywise and Blink-182 playing in his own backyard made being in a band seems like a legitimate possibility.

“That had a huge influence on all of us, especially the accessibility factor, that, 'Hey, these are normal people on stage doing what you absolutely love.' That was fantastic – that's what kinda started the local scene. One gig can be a catalyst to a large change.”

The frontman also remembers the grassroots work that went into putting a gig on back when Parkway were first coming out – the flyering that would see every lamp post, power pole and school noticeboard in the greater Byron area sharing the announcement.

“The first few times we glued them,” McCall laughs, “and then we realised that the flyers didn't actually come off so there's still half ten-year-old flyers stuck around Byron. We got a bad rap for that, but literally every aspect of the show you did yourself. When you're involved on such a personal level I think kids have a sense of pride in the fact that they're the ones responsible for keeping this thing alive. It's something that you'll stand behind.”

Humble beginnings for sure, but today Parkway Drive are one of our most recognised musical exports, and are arguably the biggest metalcore band on the planet. Looking to maintain their position atop of the heavy food chain, the quintet are currently working on a fifth studio album, and the vocalist enthuses that the group are continuing forwards with the sonic exploration that made 2012's Atlas such a defining statement for the band and the genre as a whole.

“This is going to be a hell of a lot different,” McCall states. “I'm not going to say it's going to be like a non-Parkway sounding record because we have some absolutely phenomenal songs written that are to a tee Parkway Drive, but the layering and extra work that's going into it is going to kick it to a whole other level. We [want] to take it completely outside the box and really focus on adding more to the music than we ever have, creating those [experimental] parts in more of a featured way and making it an entire song based around the concept of this being what we can sound like, rather than this can be a tiny bit of the sound we already have.

“[Atlas] was a validation and an inspiration in the fact that we can count on our fans to have an open mind to the music that we put out,” he concludes, “and we can count on ourselves to create something different that still sounds like Parkway.”