Ten Years Of Insanity

"The first goal was to 'make friends, mosh hard',” Parkway Drive frontman Winston McCall laughs when asked – just prior to their tenth anniversary tour – for the metal/hardcore mob's initial motivation. “It sounds stupid, but that was literally it; 'Let's make the heaviest band possible, so we can play the youth centre, and kids can go mental'. That was it. Then that goal literally changed two weeks later, when someone said, 'Hey, you wanna go play Brisbane?' Then it changed again to, 'Let's try and do this release, then let's do a tour and then let's continue touring', and it just kept growing and growing.

“It really has been one of those things where the goalposts kept moving, and the goals were never massively long-term. They just slowly became bigger and bigger, simply because the opportunities became bigger and bigger. So it's nuts to be ten years on, and still to be able to remember the feeling of playing the youth centre at our first show. A decade – fucking hell,” he laughs. As suggested, the Byron Bay quintet weren't always the arena-reaching, gold record-selling, world-conquering juggernaut easily eclipsing the achievements of every Australian metal or hardcore act before them, while subsequently inspiring a whole new generation of home-grown heaviness. Aside from playing numerous hardcore bills during their formative years, they built a degree of their early following via metal shows, supporting the likes of In Flames and Shadows Fall, and also appearing at the Metal For The Brain festival in 2005.

McCall is audibly astonished when this scribe mentions being among the crowd of approximately 50 punters during their midday slot at the latter. “No way, you saw that? That's awesome. I think it was the first time we ever came to Canberra. [Playing metal shows] was always weird for us, because we weren't metal guys. We were definitely playing like metal music, but we still called ourselves a hardcore band. I remember playing Metal For The Brain and it was a full-on freak-out for us, because it was like, 'We're playing a full metal show, we're not just playing with one metal band on a hardcore gig'. And we always felt out of place. It wasn't that we were made to feel out of place, it was just that we were that insecure we felt that way,” he laughs. “We didn't quite get it, [that] people didn't really give a fuck what we looked like, they just wanted to hear music. The fact that people have chosen not to judge us, and have just listened has been really cool, and that's happened worldwide. You're talking about genres where labels get thrown around for absolutely everything, and the fact that people have just chosen to go, 'Yep, that music's okay, I'll choose to like that' is cool.”

Therefore, they've forged a fanbase spanning the entire spectrum of heavy music en route to becoming a major draw at home and abroad. They've also transcended associations with the now-stale metalcore sound that peaked during their gestation. To acknowledge what the growler describes as an “insane” decade, they're embarking on a national tour, and will also play Warped Tour later in 2013. Fans will be sated to hear Parkway have been rehearsing long-absent material from 2004's Don't Close Your Eyes EP and 2005 debut LP Killing With A Smile in preparation for said commemorative shows. “We've got a release coming out just before, which we haven't announced yet,” McCall adds. “It's something that we haven't done before, and it's definitely something retrospective.”

Despite the “just roll with it” ethos guiding their immensely successful career, having reached such a momentous milestone The Music inquires as to whether the vocalist envisions Parkway Drive lasting two decades. “I have the ambition of being physically able to continue for that long, so we'll see how we go,” he chuckles. “There's certain band members who are grey-haired and certain members who are semi-balding already. My back is completely screwed. We've always talked about how funny it would be if we continued doing it at that age, and what the hell would involve being on stage. Would it just be weird to see me being semi-grey haired, having a walking stick, and still screaming like a pissed off teenager? I don't know if it would work, but if we're still liking what we do then it would be great to continue.”