INTERVIEW: Winston McCall – Parkway Drive

One of the biggest bands in modern metal, PARKWAY DRIVE have risen to the top tier of heavy music. After dominating the metalcore scene for years, 2015’s Ire marked a musical shift for the Byron Bay crew, and the results have been euphoric to say the least. In the years since that album’s release and with their solid reputation almost at bursting point, it’s fair to say that PARKWAY DRIVE are becoming a serious contender for dominating heavy music for years to come. And with last month’s Reverence reaffirming their place at the top of the summit, attention turns to the live circuit. Before what would be a career-defining performance headlining the Zippo Encore Stage at this year’s Download Festival, we spoke with frontman Winston McCall to talk about the band’s explosive growth and evolution of their sound, the reception to their latest record and how the band are ready to take to the biggest of stages.

So, you are headlining the Zippo Encore Stage tonight, what can we expect?

Winston: Everything! [laughs] Everything and then, more! We’ve been constantly wanting to expand what we do visually to match what we do sonically and we’ve been able to with the new album. Create some more moments which we thought would amplify what we already have and then on stage, we just keep wanting to push it forward. We want to keep making an experience that people can sit back and remember it.

PARKWAY DRIVE have always been known for memorable and high-octane shows, so is it always a challenge to see how you can take it forward?

Winston: Yeah it is. But it is a really good one! It would be more of a challenge I think if it is was something we weren’t interested in, it’s a really fun concept to be able to see how you make your sonics translate in an environment which also has visuals. It’s a very different way of listening to an album on headphones than it is standing in front of a stage so now, we are at this point where we are able to headline the second stage at Download, play in arenas, and do all these things on stage. It’s like, here’s your canvas, what are you going to paint? You can make one song appear several different ways with different ways you use these effects.

We’re obviously talking about the big stages, but PARKWAY DRIVE recently did the very small and intimate shows. What was it like going back to your roots?

Winston: Awesome! Absolutely awesome! I love being in a band anyway, but it is so awesome to be able to have the base core of all this which is we just like playing what we play. Strip away all of this stuff that you can see and just have us playing, we’re still going to love it. So playing those gigs, being all sweaty and seeing all these people falling over themselves, climbing off the roof and stuff like that, it’s so awesome.

They weren’t really promoted, it was like a sudden announcement…

Winston: Yeah! It’s like “we’re gigging, grab a ticket!”

…To see those shows sell-out so quick, that must be a real touching moment for you?

Winston: It was. The reaction at those shows was crazy. We said intimate shows but it felt intimate in the sense like it was connected. We were all connected, it was so fucking great, it felt very organic. All of the reactions, all of the sets, everywhere we went it just felt real and natural and yeah, it was great.

Your appearance at Download is on the back of your brand new album Reverence. Now that it has been out for about a month, what’s the reception been?

Winston: It’s been great! The thing is, I’ve got no idea what to make of the reception other than when you play a song live. At the end of the day, you can read a review or you can read a comment, but at the end of the day that’s one person saying I like it but when you play a song and wonder how does this go live, how does it work and stuff like that. It shocked me how massive these songs have been live. Like, seriously, it’s been crazy! [laughs] It’s been everything I hoped it would be, when you make a song, and especially with us, we aim to make a vibe and to have it translate to that many people is phenomenal. It’s such an awesome feeling.

You’ve experimented a little bit, especially in terms of your vocals, often the backlash can be horrific. But, what I’ve found on the whole with Reverence, most people seem to be digging it.

Winston: There’s plenty of backlash too buddy! [laughs] But, we always know that no matter what, when it comes to backlash, you make something and the same people tell you to make something different and you create something different and it’s not for them and that’s just the way it is. The vocals are there because that’s the way the lyrical delivery had to be for certain songs. I can’t sing these type of lyrics, they just had to be screamed because it comes off in a way that’s not genuine, so that is simply it. It’s about literally making sure the character of the song gave full justice to the lyrics. It’s commitment to that and the knowledge that no matter what you get with a PARKWAY DRIVE album, it’s always designed to sit with a set of songs that are already established. It’s not like we’re moving into the new era of PARKWAY DRIVE and scrap everything else before it. We still have aspects of everything from our catalogue that we play, we don’t want to start a new era that just says we now only play this.

So it is a natural evolution then?

Winston: Exactly that. Everything is supposed to compliment each other and continuously push it forward and make sure the new stuff highlights the older stuff and the old stuff highlights the new stuff, they work in conjunction. And it does work like that, we play a live set and it’s not like “oh then they played the new one and it was jarring and then they went back to the old stuff and it sounded ancient.”

It was three years between Reverence and Ire, most bands usually fall to a two-year cycle, but by taking an extra year did you really notice your growth and development as a musician?

Winston: Yes, in the sense of I think it was an easier album to write sonically than Ire because of the confidence that we’ve gained over the years. Finally, it felt like okay, we’ve got this, we’re not completely inept. We’ve always been a band that’s been quick to talk ourselves down, we’ve always been like man, we’re so lucky to be here, and yeah we are, but we do put a damn lot of time into doing this. After 15 years of being in a band and thousands of gigs, we’ve kind of learnt how to get our shit together! This was finally the time where we were like “yeah, we can write songs, let’s just write some songs” and if we think that works for this part and that’s something we’ve never done before, I trust you, do it!

Well Winston, it’s been a real pleasure. Good luck for your set tonight.

Winston: Thanks a lot man!

Reverence is out now via Epitaph Records.

For more information on PARKWAY DRIVE like their official page on Facebook.