“With every wish, a new star dies.”
I’ll admit, I fell off the Parkway Drive train long, long ago. While there have been a few tracks they’ve released in recent years that I found something to enjoy in, the Australian powerhouse group haven’t truly captivated my attention since 2012’s Atlas. Maybe it’s them, maybe it’s me, but whichever way you cut it, their more recent shift in sound, particularly on 2019’s questionable Reverence, has not worked for me. I have felt more and more over the past few years that their shift away from solid, riffy metalcore toward what I can only describe as metalcore’s answers to buttrock, was a creative decision that could not have been taken any less in stride.
Of course, this has made them naturally appeal to a wider, less questioning audience of arena rock fans, and all the best to them in that case, but I still feel the content present within Parkway Drive’s recent endeavours is severely lacking in the creative force needed to captivate active listeners, rather than just rally up an energetic crowd of 40-somethings. This could be no more apparent than in the band’s newest effort, Darker Still.
From the very first glimpse we got of Darker Still in “Glitch”, it seemed Parkway Drive had a mission statement: make everything bigger. Heightened anthemics, alongside the band’s newfound love for four-to-the-floor rhythms take the front seat in this track, and while they certainly sound more like an arena group here than ever before, I can’t say it’s very creatively gratifying in almost any facet. One-dimensional, repetitive riffing; boring percussion; and the band’s inexplicable penchant for god-awful lead guitar work define the sonic makeup of “Glitch”, feeling less like Parkway’s own greats, and more like Skillet’s “Monster”. This sound palette is not unique to “Glitch” either, as the numerous forgettable cuts on Darker Still morph into one indistinct, amorphous blob. The few that break this convention, however, seem to do so for all the wrong reasons.
One such example of this mould-breaking, is in mid-album blunder “If A God Can Bleed”, which somehow demonstrates even further creative questionability. The gritty spoken word passages that lead much of “If A God Can Bleed”, to be blunt, stand as some of the most embarrassing vocals I’ve heard all year. The faux-macho cowboy act that vocalist Winston McCall adopts throughout this slog of a ‘song’, complete with weak American accent and all, sounds nowhere near as cool or menacing as the band clearly seemed to think it did during the recording sessions. As a whole too, the track screams of that notion of ‘experimentation’ where it’s clear there’s no solid intention with it, and rather just fucking about for the sake of it. This is especially apparent in the track’s structure, as through its 2-ish minute runtime the track seems to lack any and all dynamics, and instead dwells at the same tempo and level of energy, failing entirely to justify its own existence from beginning to end.
There are moments on Darker Still that I admittedly enjoyed, however. Shocker, I know, but the more subdued, melodic vocal delivery on the album’s title track, “Darker Still”, hearkened back to the one and only track I truly liked off Reverence, “The Colour of Leaving”. Further, while the lead guitars in the track sap much of the aggressive energy right out of the track as a whole, the heavy bridge featured in “Soul Bleach”, alongside the track’s clear intention to be the token ‘fast, heavy rager’ made it far more enjoyable than much of my experience with the rest of the record. In the sake of fairness, I would also like to highlight that McCall – “If A God Can Bleed” notwithstanding – provides a hefty performance on much of Darker Still. His fierce, iconic vocal tone is still here in full force, and while it doesn’t truly elevate the album as a whole, the record would be a hell of a lot worse without it.
Aside from my individual criticisms, my primary quarrel with Darker Still is that there’s just very little going on that is even remotely noteworthy. A tried and tested formula of anthemic heavy metal tunes, seemingly hardwired to be played on the main stage at a European rock festival. Sure, if you’re into that stuff, I’m sure at least elements of Darker Still will appeal, but long-standing Parkway Drive fans surely know they’re capable of so much more on a musical level. It’s not even a clear-cut case of the group ‘softening up’, moreso a continual watering-down of their already dwindling sound to a point where it becomes null.
I take no great pleasure in putting these words to paper, but Darker Still truthfully feels like the product of a band that has achieved absolute creative bankruptcy. Brief glimpses of sonic expansion, such as in the more melodic vocal performance seen in title track “Darker Still”, or the sheer brutality of the bridge in “Soul Bleach”, are still too few and far between, and far too mired by the sheer number of awful creative decisions present for me to recommend you give this album your time. I feel no regret in saying this, however, because – as I’m sure many of Parkway Drive’s devout fans will tell you – they certainly don’t need my seal of approval. This album will undoubtedly be successful for them, and they will go on to sell out stadiums and headline big festivals. With Darker Still, however, in this way the Aussie metal titans align themselves more with the Skillets of the music world than the Bring Me The Horizons.
3/10
Darker Still will be available this Friday, September 9th via Epitaph, and you can pre-order the record here.