ALBUM REVIEW: Darker Still – Parkway Drive
It’s a tale as old as time. A band bursts out the gates, builds a fervorous fanbase, and climbs to the top of their genre. As the festival slots get higher and the venues bigger, so do the shows and the sounds. Next thing you know, they’ve shed their skin and graduated to the big leagues. AVENGED SEVENFOLD did it with Hail To The King. ARCHITECTS did it with For Those That Wish To Exist. Hell, METALLICA invented it on The Black Album, and now PARKWAY DRIVE are next at bat with Darker Still.
Sure, the Australian giants haven’t dished out deathcore in a decade, but 2015’s Ire and 2018’s Reverence sewed the seeds that Darker Still blooms. Like Napalm lights up with power solos to make trad metal fans proud, Glitch digs up the dancefloor with its industrial electro-rock stomp, and If A God Can Bleed channels ME & THAT MAN’s blackened outlaw country. No matter what nook or cranny they hide their metal under, PARKWAY DRIVE unite it all with one thing: hooks to sing your heart out to.
Like any band brave enough to switch sides, Darker Still will split a fanbase like Moses did the red sea. The Horizons/Deep Blue purists will say they’ve sold out, whilst those open to Ire and Reverence’s loftier heights will find a happy home here. But if there’s any song that’ll send shockwaves through PARKWAY’s world, it’s the towering, seven-minute title track. Revealed as vocalist Winston McCall’s attempt to make their Nothing Else Matters moment, the track wouldn’t look out of place on MAIDEN’s more progressive voyages, as majestic strings sail you through the seas of darkness and guitarists Jeff Ling and Luke Kilpatrick take command of the kingdom with glittering, golden guitar lines.
Where Darker Still might falter is also where it succeeds: it demands your attention, all of it, for a lot of your time. Its 11 tracks take you on a journey through the ‘dark night of the soul’ in 46 minutes, meaning you’ve got to buy into their heavy metal experiment. However if you do commit, you’re duly rewarded. They never stick in the same place long enough to feel stuck in the mud; Imperial Heretic is a chanty, call-to-arms heavy metal banger whilst follow-up If A God Can Bleed settles you down for a slumber, before Soul Bleach shakes you out of your sleepwalking and throws you into the pit, cleansing their heavy metal with metalcore bleach.
Whereas Reverence went to war with God and Satan, Darker Still sees McCall wrestle with himself. Inspired by the philosophical concept of the dark night of the soul, where one undergoes a difficult and significant transition to a deeper perception of life and their place in it, the album is a lyrical journey navigating that labyrinth. But it’s not what McCall says that truly captures this transformation, it’s the way it’s delivered; there’s a quiet intensity that at times roars out like a lion, but builds up and up until he defiantly declares on closer From The Heart Of Darkness that his “victory was ripped from the heart of darkness.” If you ever needed a message to carry you through, it’s that you can find light after dark.
If Ire was studying for your A-levels, and Reverence was reaching university, then Darker Still is PARKWAY DRIVE’s graduation ceremony. Whilst ARCHITECTS and BRING ME THE HORIZON are trying to revolutionise metal, PARKWAY DRIVE are the band who’ve now redefined what heavy metal well and truly is in 2022 – this is the standard to beat.
Rating: 9/10
Darker Still is set for release on September 9th via Epitaph Records.
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