LIVE REVIEW: Parkway Drive @ Alexandra Palace, London
It’s always a privilege when you bear witness to an event that could potentially be looked back on as a landmark moment for a band in years to come. NIRVANA at Reading Festival in 1994, SLIPKNOT at Download 2009, QUEEN at Wembley 1992 – you get the picture. For Aussie metal starlets PARKWAY DRIVE, a cold February evening in Alexandra Palace gave them the opportunity to own their own landmark, and it was capitalised upon in expert fashion.
Opening the proceedings were extreme metal powerhouses THY ART IS MURDER whose bone rattling slabs of core breakdowns more than justify their inclusion in this tour. The riffs are as tight and dazzling as ever – and there’s still nothing quite like a first hand view of CJ McMahon‘s seething screams of “You will see the true face of panic” on Reign Of Darkness. THY ART IS MURDER continue to show why they’re so far ahead of a cluster of their peers.
Rating: 7/10
The career of KILLSWITCH ENGAGE is at such an echelon that all they really need to give is 50% effort and any metal crowd, from any area of the globe will be up in arms. That’s not the case here though, the metalcore legends treat this as though it’s as big a deal from as it is anyone else. Classics like The End Of Heartache, Rose Of Sharyn, My Curse and My Last Serenade get the biggest sing-alongs of the night (and that’s really saying something) while Strength Of The Mind and In Due Time pay reasonable homage to the band’s more recent work. It’s a professional, heartfelt performance from KILLSWITCH but you can’t help but feel like their next album needs to be a special one if it’s going to see them through the next decade.
Rating: 7/10
What can you really say about PARKWAY DRIVE‘s live show at this point? If you’re a fan of the band you’ll already be aware that they are absolutely one of the finest performers of their generation. And yet, even with all that considered – they’re still finding new ways to up their game.
As the opening spoken word of Wishing Wells begins, you get an impending sense that this is going to be unlike most other gigs you’ve been to. Frontman Winston McCall revels in the spotlight (literally), and the ensemble of RAMMSTEIN like fire and Lars Ulrich esque snare hits gives this show the perfect platform to leap from.
While some may say that the band’s latest record Reverence was their most divisive album so far, there’s not an ounce of division in this crowd for the Aussies’ latest offering. Prey and The Void make the floors shake with their chorus lead bounce, while Absolute Power and Shadow Boxing hit with a sledgehammer of thick riffs and stage explosions. It all fits perfectly on the big stage too, it genuinely seems like PARKWAY DRIVE have belonged here for the last six years.
It’s an evening that seems to pack every punch you could want to receive as a PARKWAY DRIVE fan too. Old classics like Carrion and Karma make an incredibly welcome, mosh pit heavy appearance, Vice Grip still has a chorus that could bring down a skyscraper, and the final breakdown of Dedicated still starts riots. And as guitarists Jeff Ling and Luke Kilpatrick are lifted up on to platforms to perform Wild Eyes it becomes apparent: this band literally offer something for everyone in metal.
The closing one-two of Crushed and Bottom Feeder are the expected, fire breathing, proverbial cherry on the top of this multi-tiered metal cake. There’s mosh pits, air guitaring, chanting, and metal embraces stretching back as far as the eye can see, it’s a succinct embodiment of what this night has been about. As PARKWAY DRIVE continue to become peerless, this night at one of London’s most famous venues was not just further proof of why, but also a showing of how many people are on board for the ride.
Rating: 9/10
Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in London from Rhys Haberfield Media here:
