Parkway Drive Air Producer Concerns

Byron Bay metalcore act Parkway Drive, one of the nation's most successful heavy exports in the last decade, have revealed the concerns they faced when selecting a producer for their upcoming album.

Having previously worked with Killswitch Engage guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz for 2005 debut Killing With A Smile and 2007's Horizons they switched to Joe Barresi (Tool, Kyuss, QOTSA) for 2010's Deep Blue but the band's drummer Ben Gordon has told The Drum Media that while one of them made his drums sound "lifeless" and the other didn't do enough editing.

"Adam D is really, really tight, like a drum machine," said Gordon. "Everything is so perfect, and in a way, it makes it sound pretty lifeless. So that's why we went with Joe, because we wanted to get away from that."

He added that, "With Joe, we were happy with Deep Blue, but in a sense it was of too far in the other direction. He was so old school that he just wanted us to play whole takes and he didn't edit anything and it was extremely raw and the other end of the spectrum."

For their new album, which is as-yet-unnamed but due before the end of the year, the band employed Matt Hyde, whose CV includes records for Slayer, Sum 41 and Alkaline Trio. They see him as being "middle ground" between the two.

"What we wanted was basically something exactly in the middle, someone who was not super-new, somebody who'd been around for a while but also has the knowledge to be able to make everything sound tight and massive," Gordon said.

“That's why we went with Matt, and he's perfect – we're absolutely stoked with him. This album's the album we've always wanted to make. We feel that we've found the perfect formula."

To read the full interview, in which Gordon also discusses the pressures of keeping in shape before recording, head here.

Parkway Drive recently released their tour documentary Home Is For The Heartless, which went top in the ARIA charts on debut.