Chris O’Brien On Park Waves Festival: ‘When Something Of This Magnitude Comes To Life, It’s Incredibly Exciting’
Ahead of tonight’s Park Waves line-up reveal, Destroy All Lines Head Promoter Chris O’Brien discusses the “unique beast” that is the Parkway Drive-led festival in an exclusive chat with The Music.
Park Waves Festival (Source: Supplied)
You’d think that Chris O’Brien and the Destroy All Lines team wouldn’t have the time or energy to put on another music festival. But somehow, through all the tours, festivals, and other projects, a new event was born.
Earlier this month, the first teasers for Park Waves Festival were posted on social media, and punters were told the next wave is coming. Last week, Parkway Drive, Destroy All Lines, and Park Waves announced the dates and venues for the inaugural event, revealing that it will stop in eleven locations across the country in February and March 2026.
In addition to stopping in Adelaide and Perth, the festival is primarily taking place in regional cities and towns. Starting at Perth’s Langley Park on Saturday, 14 February, Park Waves then heads to Adelaide, Geelong, Scoresby, Bendigo, Wollongong, Eastern Creek, Maitland, Toowoomba, Byron Bay (subject to final council approval), and wraps up in Sandstone Point, Queensland on Sunday, 15 March.
Park Waves made its debut in Dresden, Germany, in 2024. It was curated as a mini-festival featuring Parkway Drive as headliners, along with acts such as Dying Fetus, Fit For A King, Erra, and fellow Aussie outfits Thy Art Is Murder and Alpha Wolf.
As for who will feature on the inaugural Park Waves Australia bill, O’Brien is tight-lipped. But the Head Promoter at Destroy All Lines has plenty more to offer in an exclusive chat with The Music ahead of the line-up reveal tonight.
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O’Brien praises his team for the incredible effort of putting on yet another enormous event. “It comes down to the team that we have, to be honest,” he tells The Music.
“I mean, it’s one thing to come up with these ideas and get creative, but without the core team that I work with, it’s just not possible. So, and I’ll call them out, because it’s rare for promoters to talk about the staff and the teams that they have: Laura [Pope], Tori [Yeomans], Alana [Vandeleur], and Em [Linehan] are the core team that work with me on the festivals and getting them up and running.”
Behind that team are even more people, and none of the festivals presented by Destroy All Lines would be possible without them. The team, time management and managing expectations are essential, says O’Brien.
“From there, it’s just managing your own time, I suppose, and expectations of everyone, and trying to make sure that the entire team is not too overworked, but we need to keep trying to push the boundaries as much as we possibly can, and keep developing the artists that we work with, and try to build some big careers.”
Logistically, O’Brien admits that the undertaking of putting on a festival of Park Waves’ scale is “massive,” but the team is more than up to the task. “We’ve all grown up together effectively and know how to put major events on. This one is a different beast, because it’s an 11-date touring festival, so we’ve got our work cut out for us. But what’s life without a challenge, huh?”
Of course, punters are familiar with the larger-scale Destroy All Lines festivals, like Good Things and Knotfest, as well as boutique events like Alpha Wolf’s CVLTFEST, the emo-driven New Bloom Festival, and the progressive rock and metal-focused Monolith. How does Park Waves differ from those events?
“Hopefully, it’s just an incredibly fun day; we don’t want it to be too serious,” O’Brien muses. “It’s not just going to be metal, metal, metal, you know, we’re going to have breaks through the day where we can and really provide an incredible experience to fans. I can’t talk too much about it, but when the artwork drops, when the line-up comes out, and when people see what we’re trying to attempt here, it’s not just a bunch of bands playing together.
“This is going to be: you walk into a festival site, and there’s something for everyone. There’s some really exciting concepts that we’ve got going on, and anything that Parkway put their hands on is just always unique and different. So, hopefully, people can expect the unexpected and just come along for the ride and enjoy the journey with us.”
As for what O’Brien is most excited about when it comes to Park Waves Festival, he says it’s “working on something that hasn’t been attempted before.”
He adds, “When something of this magnitude comes to life, it’s incredibly exciting to be working on it, and it’s great to be working on it with the team that I love and respect and admire. It’s such a joint effort for everyone to pull something like this off. And so, it’s exciting and rewarding and challenging all at the same time.”
The festival artwork is another thing O’Brien is looking forward to sharing with punters. “I think that when people see the artwork, they’ll get a sense straight away of, ‘Okay, this is what the day is going to look like.’ It’s going to add a very, very clear picture of what we’re trying to achieve.”
Overall, O’Brien hopes that Park Waves is embraced as something “very different,” as no other festival in Australia’s festival scene is currently touching the regions (other than Spilt Milk making the trek to Ballarat in Victoria).
“I mean, Groovin’ The Moo doesn’t exist anymore, so it’s an absolute one of a kind. I’m really hoping that it’s embraced by the fans… this isn’t supposed to be taking the place of anything. This is its own unique beast. And, yeah, we couldn’t be more excited to see what lies ahead for it.”
Adding that a task of Park Waves’ magnitude “hasn’t happened overnight,” O’Brien believes the travelling regional festival is the “next logical step” for Parkway Drive to take. The mission statement is pushing the boundaries and creating something different and unique for fans. “And that’s what we’re going to try and achieve with this beast.”
O’Brien describes Parkway Drive as “flag bearers” for Australian bands hosting regional tours, as they’ve been putting in the hard yards for the better part of two decades. Bands like Northlane, Alpha Wolf, and Make Them Suffer recently embarked on regional tours, with dates selling out across the country.
“We put a lot of energy into our artists to do regional tours,” O’Brien affirms. “You know, we felt that it was a market that was getting mainly missed by a lot of promoters; they were just focusing on city areas, but we’ve found a lot of success in regional markets.
“And a lot of people have moved out of cities into regional areas due to the cost of living as well. So, it’s really important for us to continue to take the music wherever we possibly can. This is probably the first time in Australian history that heavier vendors have really tackled this, and I’m really proud that Parkway wanted to do this and take it out of suburban areas and into regional centres.”
O’Brien notes that Parkway Drive have had “huge input” in bringing Park Waves to Australia and was born from a desire to return to regional tours—but not like we know them. The discussions around the festival have occurred as the band has gone on to perform at the Sydney Opera House with a symphonic orchestra and announced as the headliners of the inaugural Hellbound metal cruise next year.
Through it all, O’Brien and Parkway Drive have focused on delivering unforgettable experiences, with the end goal being even more ambitious: for Parkway Drive to become “the biggest artist in Australia, not just heavy artists, but the biggest artists in Australia.” But we’re also talking about putting more respect on heavy music’s name, and for O’Brien, that means putting homegrown acts showcasing breakdowns, blast beats, and screaming on a pedestal.
“[The Australian heavy music scene] It’s a massive part of the market, and sometimes it feels like it’s forgotten,” he explains. “But we know, as an industry, how big it actually is and how much money it generates. We know it will happen when we go to these regional areas economically, and how much money it’s going to bring into those regions as well. So, it’s something that’s not lost on us, and it’s something that we just continue to push.”
O’Brien adds, “It’s been a hot minute since Parkway have been able to do a regional tour, but it was certainly three years in the making to pull this together for them.
“So, it’s certainly something that we’ve been keeping our eye on, and we decided that if we were going to do it, we were going to do it with an absolute bang. We didn’t want to just go out and do a normal regional tour. We just wanted to create something incredibly special and unique and bring old and new fans along for the ride and produce the festival that hopefully, they’ll talk about forever.”
Park Waves will take place in February-March 2026. Tune in for the line-up reveal at 7 pm AEST and register for pre-sale tickets on the Park Waves website.
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