Album Review: Parkway Drive - Atlas

The Parkway Drive boys are back heavier and angrier than ever. Their latest effort Atlas starts off with Sparks, and offers a great build up to what the entire record has to offer. From here you're launched into Old Ghosts/New Regrets and this is classic Parkway and sounds reminiscent of the material from 2010's Deep Blue. But where Atlas differs from previous albums is through the band's willingness to push the boundaries and experiment. This is shown on tracks like The River, where clean, female vocals are used, and furthermore they've used acoustics and trumpets in Blue & The Grey, pianos and violins in the title track, and even some potentially cringe-worthy turntable scratches in The Slow Surrender that are pulled off with fervour.

Ben Gordon's drumming is tight as you'd expect, guitarists Jeff Ling and Luke Kilpatrick showcase their heavy riffs and frontman Winston McCall seems more irate than ever – his screams even more monstrous. But it's in McCall's words that he concedes how beautiful our planet is, and how we're all destroying it, quickly. “With narrow minds we decimate our one true home/Cast into oblivion, judgement is calling”, he laments in Dark Days. And one can only imagine how tracks like Swing will play out in their live shows with McCall demanding: “Swing, swing, swing motherfuckers!”

It's unrelenting how consistent Parkway Drive continues to be and since 2005's Killing With A Smile they've held the crown as Australia's best metalcore band. The screams of “It's not the years in your life; it's the life in your years”, sum up what Atlas, and Parkway Drive, represent perfectly.