Heavy Heart

What started in a basement has gone on to some of the world's biggest stages. What was once a fun pastime with friends has now become a career. What was merely just music is now a way of life. No matter how you read their story, nothing about Byron quintet Parkway Drive is or has been ordinary, whether you're talking sonically, aesthetically or personally. They play bone-crushing music, but you won't meet more affable guys, and on a black horizon they stand tall like a lighthouse on a sunny coastline.

Although their fanbase has been built from a clutch of cracking releases, each one more defining than the last, their popularity has been solidified on the stage. But their in-your-face intensity is delivered while fooling about relentlessly; guitar soloing under inflatable waves, dressing roadies up like animals and palm tree-circled drum risers are just a few of the twists the boys have brought out in the past. But by doing this – enjoying themselves and having a laugh – they make a joke out of all those oh-so serious 'core' bands with their uniformed clothes, perfectly sided hair and choreographed stage moves. Make no mistakes – Parkway Drive are one of a kind.

The band are currently enjoying some well-earned downtime – three months in fact – after completing their fourth record, before they head back to Europe and throw themselves into the fire once again. But not before Atlas drops, the band's new LP and the most anticipated record of their career. “Yeah… wow that's wild,” McCall laughs in realisation that the release is merely a week away. “I'm interested about it because normally we don't have a gap this long to think about things and I think this was the only time that I've ever been able to almost forget about the next tour. You'll have a month off but that next tour is always in the back of your mind. This has really been the ending of a chapter. It's going to be interesting to go back on tour; we've got a new record and we're trying to do a bunch of different things onstage, so it's kind of like starting over again.”

Speaking from his sunny hometown, Parkway's frontman says that when the five-piece decamped to LA to start making Atlas, it was the most out of depth the five of them had ever felt. “But the whole reason we started the band was to do just that,” McCall reasons. “There was still a lot of stuff that we weren't comfortable with that we had to try out. It's nice to be in a position to get the chance to do that.

“It started pretty early on [in the process],” he expands. “Basically with this record we worked in a very similar way to the construct of what we've always gone with; we don't really take away from what we've done but we do try and advance our music in some way, shape and form, so that leads to a different sounding record every time in a small way. [But] this time we were like, 'Fuck what we're confident with, let's just try anything that might work'. So there's strings, trumpets, DJ scratches – there's some weird stuff on there – but at the same time we didn't want to become a totally different band, we wanted to work that in with everything that we already have – we haven't sacrificed anything. It was our mission to make it all work.”

The mention of DJ scratches might have some fans ready to start shouting 'Judas!', but no one needs to get crazy now – at least until they step into the pit. Put Atlas on and you will know it is Parkway every single song, however, against their back catalogue the differences are very obvious. McCall stresses that the band weren't trying to change; they just wanted to add a new vibe to their established sound and extend the spectrum of their uncompromising metalcore. To bring their vision into fruition they enlisted Matt Hyde, a man that's been at the helm for records from Terror to Slayer and No Doubt, just to name a few.

“He is the man,” McCall beams. “We bought all our ideas to him, but in the most basic form. We had no idea with regards to these instruments we wanted to bring in, we just plucked them out of the keyboard, like, 'This sounds good, some fucking trumpet modulator or dodgy keys and string maker'. And we just hoped that it would work and that we could give it to him without him going, 'What the hell is this sound? I don't even know what I'm listening to!' So we gave it to Matt and he knew exactly what he wanted to do; he knew what people to get and help us out with it and he made it happen. And the people that he got to [play the instruments on the record] were so talented it was absolutely ridiculous. It was a case of us sitting back, having this record, then just being belittled in our musical abilities by these world-class players – it was pretty cool. And if we hadn't worked with Matt we wouldn't have gotten people of that calibre – he had the connections big time.”

The frontman and sponsored bodyboarder calls Atlas a companion piece to the band's most recent DVD, Home Is For The Heartless. Shot across 42 countries in five continents, the movie documents the level at which Parkway Drive are revered on the world stage while highlighting the lengths that they're willing to travel, literally, to connect with that rabid fanbase. But where the platinum-selling film shows the life-affirming experiences shared on the road, the album puts forward the flipside they've witnessed firsthand.

“I think we're definitely very conscious people in the first place,” McCall states. “We live in an age now where ignorance is an excuse people can't stand behind anymore; you can find out anything with the touch of a button on a computer. The thing is though, when you travel and you see these places and wonderful things, the things that aren't great you can't really convey on a nice happy band DVD; if you're a conscious person you do take on the weight of the negatives you are introduced to from your horizons expanding, and those positive experiences have to be matched by negative ones as it's not a happy, happy world out there – there's a lot of fucked shit going on. This [album] is sort of the darker side of that DVD. And I think the two [together] – this release really goes hand in hand with that movie simply because it was made around the same period of time. So I think watching that and reading the lyrics, you can understand a bit more.”

The band have taken so much on board, in fact, that McCall can't even begin to explain the moments that have shocked him and in course shaped him. “It's just one of those things where you see the ads on television, like 'Hey kids, give a dollar a day, it will help out a starving child' and stuff like that – it triggers the guilt switch in your brain and you change the channel. It's very different when it's happening right in front of you and you can't change the channel. This is happening on such a grand scale that a dollar a day doesn't fix it. There needs to be a massive shift but these decisions are in the hands of very few, and it's when you take that into account and witness it personally that you realise how much of a change really has to be made.

“With travelling, you learn a hell of a lot about yourself and a hell of a lot about the world at the same time; some of your views change and some are reinforced – that's where the lyrical themes came in. And I think it's led to some really blunt songs,” he says with a wry laugh. “With some songs on this record, there's very little room for interpretation or misinterpretation. You can definitely hear it and go, 'This is what he's pissed about' and that's it. There's no shade of grey in there.”

As for where McCall and his childhood friends in Parkway Drive will be taking their direct musical messages, even the screamer isn't too sure. The continent of Africa is mentioned in passing, for the simple reason that they “haven't been there before”, but now as their 20s become their 30s the times are changing, and as McCall remarked earlier, a new chapter has begun. The last year has been the most rewarding of the band's career; however, it's also been the most tiring. But like each Parkway song and every single show suggests, the Byron boys are committed to seeing this great journey through, exploring the Atlas and making sure they put in more than their dollar's worth, even if they are getting old.

“But fuck it – we're in a pretty privileged position to be complaining about that stuff,” he finishes with a deprecating chuckle, “so I'll just keep my mouth shut.”

FLYING THE FLAG HIGH

However big Parkway Drive get on a global scale, they will still be seen by fans in this country as the little band that could. But before they played Sonisphere's main stage and signed to legendary record label Epitaph, the band were given their first break by the at-the-time domestic leaders of metalcore, I Killed The Prom Queen, with the Adelaide lads releasing a split EP with the Byron gang in 2003. Parkway have never forgotten that grassroots push that helped take them around the world, and now they've come back again they're looking to repay favours and also offer the same assistance for future heirs to the throne.

“It's all Australian bands on this tour and that is a massive deal to us,” McCall informs with genuine pride. “The interesting thing with this tour is that it's completely full circle, like Prom Queen were one of the bands that started us doing what we do and definitely started this band out – they gave us the biggest leg up possible. We toured with Northlane once and the drummer was saying that we were the first heavy band he ever saw, and those guys are now touring with us [again]. And Survival are the newest band on the bill – they've just started up and they're friends of ours, so it's literally four generations of bands which is really awesome. I think it's a really cool thing to be able to put together on one bill; just having it all Australian, having it all encompass that much and be able to show how far you can come. To be able to put on gigs of that size and say this is essentially a local show, this is your local product and this is what it's worth.”