Album Review: Parkway Drive - Atlas

With their fourth record, Byron Bay's Parkway Drive provide us with an audio insight into how they view the world. But unlike their DVD Home Is For The Heartless, this isn't pretty or easy on the senses. This is Parkway's apocalyptic soundtrack to what they've witnessed during their travels and if the socially conscious lyrical content is any indication, we're fucking this place right up. Sonically, the rule book has been tossed out completely with this release, with various new instrumentation – strings, brass, keys, turntables – being thrown into the pot, creating a record unlike anything they've released before.

That's not to say they've forgotten who they are. Just try and deny the pit potency of Old Ghost/New Regrets or Swing. But the arrangements of the songs are richer and with more depth, offering fans far more to sink their teeth into. Take The River for example. Ethereal isn't a word that's perhaps ever been written in reference to something Parkway Drive has created. However, the clean female vocals introduced on the track couldn't be described as anything but, offering this incredible balance, especially when linked directly to a lone soloing guitar. Taking these calculated risks has helped extend the sonic spectrum of the band, a point further highlighted on closing stand Blue And Gray. Combining trumpets and flamenco-style guitar with thrash metal soloing and cut-throat tempo changes, the song moves in short, succinct parts. It has to be the most ambitious piece of music that the quintet have ever written and, arguably, also the best.

With Atlas, Parkway Drive has crafted a sonic landscape unseen while losing none of their trademark brutality, in the process introducing a new benchmark in metalcore.