Live Reviews : Parkway Drive & Confession @ Palace Theatre, Melbourne 22/09/2013

Images by: Callum Broom
Words: Jonty Simmons

Click here to view full gallery.

It’s official. Parkway Drive haven’t lost any energy since they exploded onto the live scene from a town worlds away from the crushing metal only Parkway does best; Byron Bay. Over the course of an hour and a half, Parkway managed to fit in cuts from each of their releases, ‘Don’t Close Your Eyes’, ‘Horizons’, ‘Deep Blue’ and ‘Atlas’, respectively. The audience span around in a flurry of punches, kicks, and moves in between, expelling the pent up energy created by the band’s punishing material from their entire career.

Parkway Drive

Unfortunately, due to a timing error, only the final minutes of first opening support ‘Higher Power‘ were heard. However, it’s obvious that this punk influenced 5-piece, headed by vocalist Oscar McCall of 50 Lions and brother Winston’s fame, will be destroying venues on their own tour in the very near future. Special guests Confession arrived on stage to the expected calls of ‘Fuck Crafter’; evidently outspoken vocalist Michael Crafter has managed to translate these insults into musical energy, as the entire band managed to feed off the power emitted from Crafter’s microphone.

Confession obviously had high hopes for their supporting set, due to select members hailing from Melbourne, making the Sunday show a home-town celebration of sorts. In response, the audience dutifully opened up the pit and threw themselves around much to the delight of the members on-stage. Unfortunately, touring vocalist Doyle Perez, most famously known for his Parkway covers on YouTube and solo effort ‘D at Sea‘ was absent, leading to a much to be desired vocal effort from guitarist Russell Holland during set favourite ‘The Long Way Home’. However, Holland’s clean singing was mercifully cut short after one song, and Confession continued to provide their signature ability to create multiple breakdowns within a matter of seconds without sounding as if they opened up a basic ‘How to play Hardcore’ textbook. Crafter cemented his reputation as a veteran of the Australian hardcore scene  with a scat filled tale of Parkway’s loss of a rock-paper-scissors bet to down laxatives in their first show at the Palace in front of 10 people, and their subsequent ‘shit-spraying’ of the Palace bathrooms, much to the audience’s delight at hearing stories of old. It was a celebration of the past after all. Unequivocally, Crafter’s metaphorical child in the form of Confession won’t be leaving any-time soon, and can only be said to have their best years ahead of them, barring a much anticipated Crafter meltdown in keeping with past events.

Parkway Drive

The crowd knew exactly who they were there for, however. As soon as the lights went down, bass guitarist Jia O’Connors voice rocketed out of the speakers whilst regaling the audience of their humble beginnings “playing every show at every venue”, and a slideshow of photos from the very start of the Parkway journey appeared on the four screens at the back of the stage, the crowd surged forward in a swell much like the waves the Parkway boys love to surf on during their off time in Byron Bay. Once the now legendary Australian metal-core outfit appeared on stage, it was on for one and all.

Opening with the “very first song [they] ever wrote”, ‘I Watched‘ from début EP ‘Don’t Close your Eyes‘, Winston and Co. managed to entrance the small crowd who filled the floor in typical violent fashion. Moving directly onto crowd favourite ‘Smoke ‘Em if Ya Got ‘Em’ and long forgotten track ‘Looks Like Yoda’, it was evident who’d stuck with the band from the very beginning, with select members of the crowd screaming along to every perfectly pitched word from Winston’s mouth. Years of touring have enabled the band to make their beginning material, which evidently shows its age 10 years on, sound as if it could be placed as a fast paced effort on their next album. In an orgy of crowd-pleasers, surprises and much needed set perennials (How to Speak Without a Tongue, here’s looking at you), the Parkway crew blasted through ‘Gimme a D’, ‘Mutiny’, and the aforementioned ‘How to Speak Without a Tongue’ from 2005’s ‘Killing with a Smile’; teenage favourites of many, nostalgic joy seemed to erupt from the floor towards the members on stage.

The energy certainly never let up during blistering 2007’s ‘Horizons’ opener, ‘The Sirens’ Song’; the boys managed to whip over half the room into a circle pit with bodies flying into the walls, smiles on their faces and ready to spring right back into the action. In keeping with their light hearted nature, Winston told the crowd that this was rhythm guitarist Luke ‘Pig’ Kilpatrick’s only useful effort, with its erratic 20 second guitar intro keeping the crowd going. ‘Idols and Anchors’ provided a brief respite from the chaos, with those who had obviously seen the ‘Home is for the Heartless’ DVD emulating Brazilian crowds by singing guitarist Jeff Ling’s riffs right back onto the stage.

Parkway Drive have never been ones to let the crowd breathe for too long, closing the ‘Horizons‘ portion of their set with the frenzied ‘Breaking Point’. A brief moment of silence while the boys changed eras to 2010’s ‘Deep Blue‘ was quickly cut short with obvious elation erupting from the crowd when the intro to ‘Sleepwalker’ signalled one of the heaviest pits of the night. This was effortlessly followed by the deafening chants during the all inclusive ‘Home is for the Heartless’, and the obvious talent shown by drummer Ben Gordon in the intro to ‘Karma‘; it can easily be said that opening drum solo will get any metal-head ready to run in circles.

Black enveloped the Palace floor, with 2012’s ‘Atlas’ opener ‘Sparks’ giving the band (and loving crowd) a break, if only for a moment, before hurtling head-on into ‘Old Ghosts, New Regrets’ and the sheer venue destroying power of lead single ‘Dark Days‘. The true surprise of the night was the addition of ‘The Slow Surrender‘, a track which, upon first and multiple listens, seems unsuited to a live environment. However, it gave each member, with the band joking it was bassist Jia’s “one and only time to shine”, to showcase their talents in separate parts; of course the stand out was Winston McCall, who seems to have not only matured as a song-writer, but as one of heavy metal’s pre-eminent screamed vocalists. In all seriousness, the man’s vocals alone are a force to be reckoned with. During a façade that Parkway would ‘finish’ with ‘Wild Eyes‘, the roof was nearly blown off by each and every member of the audience acquiescing to Winston’s requests for participation in the song’s instantly recognisable riff.

Even though the boys left the stage, it was obvious what was coming next. Even Winston admitted that they would be “playing the next song till the day [they die]”, catalysing the loudest cheer of the night from the crowd; no small feat in a set-list of hits. However, once the opening strains of their career defining, and set closing staple ‘Carrion’ enveloped the room, and the subsequent competitive effort of the audience to hold the title of ‘loudest Carrion chant’, it was pure Parkway. This is easily defined as each member of the band working together, yet easily separated in the mix, an influx of crowd surfers, the entire room singing along and sweaty bodies meshed into one entity, pure Parkway hasn’t left the band’s material for one second.

Amid deafening cheers, Parkway Drive left the stage to complete their two show run in Melbourne; despite having multiple shows to still perform across the country, and the weight of ten years on their shoulders, the Parkway Drive juggernaut is surely unstoppable with the band, so far, at the top of their career.

www.parkwaydriverock.com

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