‘Ground zero‘ opens with what sounds like a wind up toy machine. 30 seconds of mystery lasts until the scream of lead singer Winston McCall unleashes into the classic Parkway Drive sound: metalcore with the lead guitar following the melody of the vocals throughout the song. “Burn it, burn it all away”. ‘Like Napalm’ makes it’s message clear right from the start. A heavy repetitive riff during the chorus creates a dark and strong song. Near the end, all goes quiet except for the bass and drums. Winston whispers his lyrics on top of it. A very eerie feeling. One last time the song goes all out. “Burn it! Burn it all away!”

‘Glitch’, one of the singles of this album and one of the hardest songs to write according to Parkway Drive. The song was the first one to be written and the last one to be finished. It took two years until the song was what is was supposed to be. Originally, ‘Ground Zero’ and ‘Glitch’ were back to back. But they decided to split it and make it two individual songs. Parkway Drive is a band that will only release their music if they think it sounds good. With COVID, this was the first time that they didn’t have a deadline. Normally, they write their albums in between tours, but there were no tours. Which was both a blessing and a curse at the same time. On one hand, there was no rush in creating the album. On the other hand, that meant there was lot of time to look back on things and tweak it until there was perfection. But perfection is a hard thing to reach.

Another single of the album is ‘The Greatest Fear’. Short strums are combined with heavy and short words. This album is darker than the usual stuff that Parkway Drive releases. It is also written in a dark time; during COVID where bands weren’t allowed to perform and a lot of bands were killed so to say. Parkway Drive stated that they were in a position where they were big enough and had enough back up to be able to come back after two or three years of not performing. They were actually planning to take a year off. And then COVID happened. Maybe this is the greatest fear of bands. Not being able to perform and see your dream slip though your fingers.

The pearl of this album and title track ‘Darker Still’ is quite something. The whistles in te beginning started as an acoustic track. Guitarist Jeff Ling thought they would sound good when they were whistled. They googled ‘best whistler in the world’ and came to Molly Lewis. She ended up freestyling the whistling in this song. This is the first song ever where we hear Winston sing in his clean voice so much. Almost the whole song. He states in the Q&A that it took him 10 years to accomplish this. Screaming always came natural to him. On the early albums, he says he couldn’t sing, so he screamed. But he decided to take singing lessons and achieve the dream of being able to sing a ballad. Well, here it is. And it is an absolute pearl of a song. Very special and emotional. The video shows the head from the album cover. That face is surrounded by a Roman mask. The artwork is created by the German artist called Hedi Xandt from Hamburg. Parkway Drive had seen his artwork and wanted to know what he would come up with when knowing the story of the album. So the artist came up with this. The story is that this album is about the inside, the human soul. It’s being protected by the mask, but also being trapped by the mask.

‘Imperial Heretic’ fades in slowly until it’s at full volume. Once again, this song comes with a beautiful breakdown. “But I won’t, I refuse, I refuse to repeat it!” So much power is released by that sentence, followed up by a solo and one last build up. ‘If a God can Bleed’ starts off by these lyrics being whispered to you. Winston sings to you in what probably is the lowest voice he can do. A slower and less energetic song on the album. ‘Soul Bleach’ then makes up for that lower energy on the previous song. It blasts right in and creates this energetic riff that’s made for a mosh pit. Fast lyrics and low, fast riffs on this one. ‘Stranger’ is only 51 seconds. A very eerie song that gives you goosebumps. Listen to this with your lights on. Or maybe not. It’ll enhance the feeling you get from it. ‘Land of the Lost’ opens with what sounds like a computer voice is singing the first lines. After that, the song goes all out, full power. “Keep digging the hole down deeper, Keep digging. Keep digging, the whole thing runs on“. Closer ‘From the Heart of the Darkness’ opens very mysterious, then goes into something that sounds like the viking clap from Iceland. Words are spoken loud and clear into your face in this one. The space between the words is filled with guitar strums.

This album is darker than the previous albums. It was (and still is) a dark period. Happy songs don’t get the message across, says the band. The songs sound better when they are dark. The title ‘Darker Still‘ is a follow-up from where Winston left their previous album ‘Reverence’. ‘Reverence’ was a dark point in his life, but also a point of change and finding something new in the world. The further you go in life, it doesn’t get lighter but more complicated, he says.

‘’Life grows darker still, but it doesn’t mean its bad. It becomes more complicated and the darkness is just as valuable as the light. You need the shadow, otherwise you are just blind’’. – Winston McCall.

Parkway Drive is an honest band, honest to themselves and honest to the fans. This makes that they will always go 110% in their shows and albums. This one is darker than usual, but the quality is outstanding. So much energy is coming from this. You feel that this is an outlet for the band to share their frustrations, their anger towards the situation in the world. But they will always give it their all. And you can clearly hear that in this masterpiece full of new surprises and old classic Parkway Drive sounds.

Parkway Drive is:
Winston McCall – Vocals
Jeff Ling – Guitar
Luke Kilpatrick – Guitar
Jia O’Connor – Bass
Ben Gordon – Drums

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