Parkway Drive + Emmure @ The Ballroom, Birmingham – Wednesday 14th November 2012
Metalcore was never a genre of music designed to fill arenas. It’s always felt more suited to sweaty dives than anything with a sponsor’s name over the door. But now, one band threatens to take this extreme form of music to the masses. That band is Parkway Drive.
Tonight though, the Australians are playing the main room at Birmingham’s Ballroom atop a mixed bill which includes main support, New York heavy hitters, Emmure. Almost ten years of ferocious deathcore has seen the band build a loyal following and they go down a storm with tonight’s fairly young crowd. At one point the lights in the venue fail, leaving Emmure in almost darkness but frontman Frankie Palmeri thinks on his feet and gets everyone near the front with a mobile phone to turn on the lights. It works surprisingly well too.
A mixture of almost spoken lyrics, vicious growls, dissonant chords and an abundance of their signature breakdowns means they have a very distinct sound and a large proportion of the crowd seem to know the words to every song. The band don’t seem 100% committed tonight however. 10 Signs You Should Leave and Cross Over Attack sound great but you get the feeling this is just another gig for them and, with Palmeri wearing his coat on stage, he looks like he’s all ready to leave at the earliest opportunity.
Thankfully, the lights are fixed in time for the headliners, and Parkway Drive begin as they mean to continue with the full throttle of Sparks, the opening track from their new album, Atlas. This is quickly followed by Old Ghost/New Regrets and it’s swiftly apparent that, despite this being only their 2nd show in a few months, plus the fact that they’re still jet lagged, here is a band at the top of their game. The Byron Bay residents thrive in a live setting and seem to be genuinely having fun on stage. Winston McCall’s vocals are a perfect blend of harmony and utter ferocity and his bandmates all play their parts flawlessly, despite endlessly running around the Ballroom stage trying not to bump into one another!
Halfway through their set, McCall asks the fans if they’d prefer an old song, 2006’s Gimme A D, or Swing from the new album. I have to give the crowd credit for choosing the newer song. Not something I’d imagine would happen with other bands. Idols & Anchors brings one of the biggest crowd singalongs of the night before the main song kicks in at breakneck speed and chaos in the pit ensues. In a good way! The frontman looks genuinely taken aback by the enthusiasm of the fans and a huge smile regularly graces his tanned face.
During the encore they launch into fan favourite, Carrion, before abruptly stopping it again moments later. “No!” shouts McCall, “That’s how you’re gonna end it?! That’s as loud as you can be?” They begin again and this time the whole room bellows the title back towards the stage and the uplifting song brings tonight’s proceedings to an epic close.
Parkway Drive have the tunes, the attitude and the dedicated fanbase needed to take them well into the bigger venues without compromising their sound. Atlas could well be the album to give the world its first arena-filling metalcore band. Not bad for a bunch of surfer mates from sunny Byron Bay!
Review & photos by Steve Gerrard