This year marks a huge milestone for Parkway Drive- ten years since the release of their debut album Killing With A Smile. With the release of that genre defining record, Parkway Drive were blasted from the beaches of Byron Bay to stages all around the world, taking their place as Australian metalcore representatives around the globe. For vocalist Winston McCall it is hard to believe just how much time has passed.

“It’s weird, time really does fly. If you think of it in that capacity its crazy, for me that was like a third of my lifetime ago and that’s even more insane, I went to school and then I went to another school and then I recorded that record and now I’m here. That’s the gaps in my life. It’s a pretty massive point, so it’s pretty bizarre that we ever got to this point, let alone the fact that people still remember that record. I was very oblivious to the fact that we were creating something that would last that long when we actually did it.”

And Parkway Drive isn’t showing signs of slowing down yet. 2015 is a new beginning for the band. With the impending release of their fifth album, Ire, comes the beginning of a new chapter in their career.

“The whole record, the whole idea of it was change. Very early on we felt that we had written four albums, which we really loved that were written to a very specific formula and with the same goals in mind, to be faster, heavier, harder the whole time. That was the evolution that we made and we felt once it came to making a new record, after doing Atlas, we felt if we go faster we are going to start creating noise that we don’t want to create, and we are going to start losing aspects of the band that we love, we’ll lose the melody, I’m going to have to sing even lower and there’s going to be no humanity left,” he said.

“We felt that we had achieved what we wanted to achieve with that sound and we weren’t inspired to continue writing like that so we wanted to try doing other stuff with the same goals that we had originally when starting but using them in a different way.”

One of the reasons Parkway Drive has had such continued success is the fact that the band’s core writing team has remained the same throughout their career. And that has a lot to do with being on the same page.

“It was really odd because the three of us that write- Ben, Jeff and myself- all came to this feeling and this conclusion on our own without talking to each other and we all came in and talked to a different member of the band about it, to test the waters, without knowing what their opinion was.

“Everything, absolutely everything that influenced us was different”

“I thought this was going to be a really hard thing to talk about but we were all feeling the exact same, it felt right for us because that’s where we were creatively.”

An introduction to the album has come in the form of singles ‘Vice Grip’ and ‘Crushed’- two polarising tracks that equally show off Parkway Drive’s new direction, both musically and visually.

‘Vice Grip’ was not the single most people were expecting to hear from Parkway Drive, and while new listeners were excited, some older fans were shocked. But this is exactly the reaction Winston and the band expected.

“We felt that there was a lot of change on this album and after having done four records that fitted a very similar formula there is definitely going to be a pre-conceived notion of what this band sounds like and what we are capable of sounding like. For better or worse people are going to have an opinion on it.

“This time around we knew we had a lot of stuff that was very challenging when it came to the way we already sounded so we wanted to release something that had an impact straightaway, it pricks peoples ears up and makes them think ‘I didn’t know that this was something that could happen maybe ill have to continue paying attention’. It’s all about breaking the cycle.”

Change is the key idea behind this new chapter for Parkway Drive. Five albums in and this is their chance for everything to feel new and fresh again. This is not about what other people are expecting Parkway Drive to do, or what other bands are doing, for the first time this album is completely introspective.

“When it comes down to writing and creating we are definitely striving to create an entire experience that stands alone. At this point in time the goal for us has been less of let’s see where it takes us which has been the last 12 years of this band’s existence and now we don’t want Parkway to necessarily just be Parkway Drive within metal, within metalcore, we want it to be a self defining experience. We really want to craft our own identity within this, so its less about looking at what other people are doing and more looking inside at what we are actually capable of doing which is a bit of a change for us

“Everything, absolutely everything that influenced us was different. Being able to make this record hit certain tones that we haven’t hit before and go to certain places with it which didn’t necessarily rely on blunt force trauma and faster and heavier and breakdowns to actually create that kind of feeling and that vibe was a massive thing for us.”

To summarise a record into a simple sentence is a difficult thing, but for Winston there is only one word that can do this album justice, “New. New in every sense of the word. That’s probably the only way. Heavy doesn’t do it justice simply because I think every single aspect on that record whether it’s the familiar elements or the unfamiliar elements, they are all quite new in their arrangements, honestly there is more new in this than anything you’ve ever experienced from this band.”

[include_post id=”451852″] It has to be a nervous task, taking a formula you have spent the last 12 years building and perfecting and completely turning it on its head, especially when that formula has put you on such a pedestal. But Winston and Parkway Drive aren’t too worried about what people will think when Ire is finally unleashed.

“New people might like it, people might like it more, people might like it less, people might want us to burn in hell but you never know until you do it. We’re lucky career wise simply because we’ve got so much back catalogue which cemented itself so well in people’s minds and has created such a fantastic legacy. It has got us to such a point where we don’t have to worry about creating a sound and if everyone hates it all of a sudden we’ve got nothing to fall back on.

“We have that self made safety net so we took the opportunity while we could, this was about creating an evolution.”

Looking back on the last twelve years there isn’t much Winston would change about the path Parkway Drive has taken, everything they have done and everything they are yet to do. This next chapter is all about continuing the legacy, albeit in a different way.

If he could go back, there would only be one thing he would tell the Winston McCall first starting out on this journey,

“Make the most of all the sleep you can. That’s it. To be honest there is nothing that I would change about what we have done and I wouldn’t want to spoil any of it. For better or worse its been an absolutely insane existence thus far and it’s brought us to a really fantastic point, and as much as I think this record is completely out there and it is a big change for us, I would be very surprised if this is the end of the band. I really think this is just the beginning of another chapter so I really wouldn’t want to jeopardise that.”

IRE is out locally September 25th via Resist. For more info and to pre-order visit www.cookingvinylaustralia.com

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