Driving Off The Map

"This is what happens when friends get lucky, and know they got lucky, rather than getting lucky and thinking they deserve it somehow.” So says Parkway Drive's vocalist Winston McCall – ferocious when on stage, but utterly approachable while chatting in a Sydney pub, wearing shades against the sun in a look that is typical of his Byron Bay beginnings. He's talking about the juggernaut that is Parkway Drive who, as they approach their fourth album, Atlas, have left a lasting mark on heavy music in this country and have cemented themselves as one of the nation's top musical exports. If one needed evidence, you'd only need look to this year's platinum-selling Home Is For The Heartless tour documentary. It shows five friends travelling the world, often to places other bands wouldn't dare visit, making the most of a moment that must have originally seemed fleeting but has now lasted the better part of a decade.

Truth be told, Parkway Drive's story isn't all that remarkable. In 2002 five guys from Byron Bay indulge in riff-heavy metalcore during their spare time and people start to take to it like basketball shorts to a mosh. What is special is their context. They've become the defining band of a genre and an era that has seen many – if not most – of their contemporaries fall by the wayside.

When the band formed, they were entering into an alternative scene that was just about to explode. Bands like themselves, I Killed The Prom Queen (who their first release was a split EP with), Carpathian and The Amity Affliction became regular high school war cries and, to an extent, veterans like Mindsnare and Toe To Toe found new audiences. But like all phases, the flame of the emo and the hardcore boom – the two groups of kids fuelling one another – began to flicker before the turn of the decade. All-ages shows started to dry up and mid-level bands stopped touring every second month. Parkway Drive were the exception to the fizzle; having opened the international channels early in the peace, they became the biggest success of that scene. They are the career that will write those years into heavy Australian music history.

“It's pretty weird,” McCall admits. “We do [take it on], but it's always in a, 'I can't believe we've won awards, and that people come to the shows in the numbers that they do,' sort of way. We definitely are one of those bands who happened to be right place, right time, right sound. It's a complete fluke in regards to all those chance factors. We do look back and think, 'Man, if we had started six months later this wouldn't be happening. If we had written songs that were a little bit different, this wouldn't be happening.' There was going to be clean singing on Killing With A Smile, but the bass player at the time screwed up. So it could have been completely different, we could have written a record that people went, 'Urgh, clean singing'. So many things could have changed in the band's trajectory that would have had us fall out of that arc of what sounds were in at the time.”

The career decisions Parkway have made have always seemed to be the right ones, but things are, remarkably, still getting bigger. And shit, while talking about bringing some of the more production-heavy tracks to the stage, McCall says things like “that song is a mission… but we can always come back and tour with an orchestra or something,” like it's a real possibility. Safe to say, they've 'made it'. “'Made it' happened years ago,” he clarifies. “There's been so many points in this career that we were like, 'This is it, this is as big as it's going to get, enjoy this moment because this is amazing.' We've said it at 300-people shows, we've said it when records came out, we've said it the first time we ever walked into a recording studio.

“It's still just a big mind-fuck, basically; we just go along with it. We're really, really stoked to be doing what we're doing and I'm sure we sound like 'trying to please everyone' wankers, but it really is [how we feel]. No one can predict this shit and we're so stoked to be doing what we're doing. We had so much fun recording this record and I'm really, really psyched to play it. Everything now is at the point of, 'What else can we do?'”

That mantra is evident in Atlas, a record that hasn't so much reinvented the wheel for Parkway as it has built a bigger vehicle for them. They haven't always been satisfied with their producer (Adam Dutkiewicz – too perfect on Killing With A Smile; Joe Barresi – too loose on Deep Blue), but with Matt Hyde, Atlas has found that middle ground and the band's songwriting is continually creeping forward. “When it comes to writing, slowly we always push the envelope – a little bit, a little bit…” McCall explains. “It's not a massive conscious thing about what people will think of it, it's just between us. The understanding between us and the fans seems to work pretty well.”

Through it all you can't say that Parkway haven't made their own luck. Relentless touring and a non-stop work ethic has helped their cause no end throughout this first decade together, but that can't last forever. Their live show is set to get a substantial facelift next time around as the band develop an Altas show that can be toured anywhere in the world. “We want to make the shows something bigger. And I don't mean the amount of people coming, but what we can actually do with the band in regards to the band in making it something unique. The amount of touring we're doing can slow down a little bit, but we want to make it worth it when people come to see us.”

McCall adds, “There's definitely some new music on this record that is bigger in a sonic sense, and in an emotional sense. I think we can do more visually to give more impact to the music than just us on stage, which I think has worked great for us up until this point in time. We really love doing it, and we don't want to take away that element. But I've seen a lot of gigs in the last few years where I'm like, 'Wow'. I think if you tie in extra elements – if your visual sense is stimulated as well as your hearing – it has a hell of a lot more impact, which is where we're heading.”

Because, in the end, “Kids react universally in a really positive way,” McCall beams. “The shows overseas are mind-blowing these days. It's so insane to think that that reaction is happening overseas. I can still remember the first time we toured overseas, playing a show and there were like 1,200 people and we were like, 'Holy crap, this is insane. I can't believe so many people are going psycho'. The shows overseas are twice as big as that now, it's ridiculous. And the kids are losing their shit.”

Despite their international adulation, Parkway remain an Australian band, and there's a sense of ownership from those fans who moshed their way through gigs in that scene that launched the band in the last decade. It goes back to the sense of, 'Parkway Drive is our success story'. “To have that [international response] in your head is really bizarre, and you forget how insane Australia actually is until you get back to Australia. There seems to be a hell of a lot of pride in that we are a local band, and we're stoked on that as well.”

HOW TO MAKE  IT IN AMERICA (AND EUROPE)

It's a hard but true fact that Australia's heavy scene just can't support as much as we'd like it to and a band the size of Parkway (or The Amity Affliction these days) just has to go overseas to grow. According to McCall, networking is key.

“I don't think people realise how much networking, in the sense of touring with international bands, helps local bands. It would get us in contacts with labels who [we could work with] and vice versa.”
Would you say that networking was the key to Parkway's overseas success?

“Absolutely, 100 percent. 100 percent. You're talking about MySpace booming at the exact same time, but that also ties in because, like I said, the first international tours we had were because we did swaps with other bands because we made friends with them online or through Graz [Graham Nixon, manager and head of Resist Records] knowing someone at a label and saying, 'Hey, do you guys wanna come over if we bring you over to Australia and do a tour with us, we're doing OK. Then, do you wanna take us on some dates over there?' And that's how it happened.

“That was literally the only way you could leave the country. And that still happens, you see bands coming over and swapping with Australian bands. The Amity Affliction, House Vs Hurricane… they all swap to help them out. And I think that is a fantastic thing – that's the way the community works.”