The awkwardly clean-sung, lullabye-like opening of “Ground Zero” can be confronting on first listen, but it’s not long – thirty seconds to be exact – before frontman Winston McCall switches into a harsher gear with a roar of “Explode” and the rest of the band drop the beat like the proverbial time bomb he was warning you about all along, and it’s only another sixty before you’ll screaming the same refrain along with him at the top of your lungs. The majority of Darker Still sees Parkway Drive firing on all cylinders. Yet, while broadly successful in its execution, the album also sees Parkway Drive beginning to repeat themselves somewhat. It’s follow-up, the suggestively-titled Darker Still, is a similarly ambitious affair that solidifies the Byron Bay bruisers’ transition from rabid, riff-driven hardcore to anthemic arena metal. It couldn’t have happened to a better or more deserving band and, although any mainstream ascension inevitably invites accusations of “selling out” or “watering down” a sound for commercial gain, Parkway Drive handily refuted such allegations by making Reverence (2018) one of the darkest, most ambitious, complex and – let’s not forget – best albums of their career. Watching Parkway Drive go from playing the kinds of suburban all-ages gigs my friends and I would go and throw down to every other weekend in highschool to worldwide arena and festival headlining superstars has been one of the most satisfying things I’ve witnessed throughout a lifetime of listening to and documenting heavy music.
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