June 1, 2004 - Parkway Drive and Don't Close Your Eyes

It's a double release day, and they're both new bands! Another band joins my library when Parkway Drive released their debut EP "Don't Close Your Eyes" on June 1 2004. But who is Parkway Drive? They are a five-piece metalcore band from Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia consisting of lead singer Winston McCall, lead guitarist Jeff Ling, rhythm guitarist Luke Kilpatrick, bassist Brett Versteeg and drummer Ben Gordon. Parkway Drive play a pretty heavy style, even for metalcore, with lots of hard-hitting breakdowns, plenty of fast and crazy metal and McCall bringing some extreme vocals at both ends of the spectrum. Let's see what these surfer-metalheads are all about!

The albuk begins with a song just called "..." and it's just a woman repeating "I don't wanna die", starting with a whisper and ending with a high shrill yell. A weird little intro before we reach the first real song "Smoke 'Em If Ya Got 'Em" and now we see what Parkway Drive is all about as they slam into a heavy main riff with some super low rhythm guitar and bass and some fast and pretty sweet lead guitar by Ling. Gordon's drums are fast and solid and McCall shows us right away he can git both ends of the spectrum with a super low and heavy scream and also a long-held and super heavy high scream; he seems pretty awesome! The verse is pretty thrash-y with lots of cool chugging guitars and McCall continues to show off his range with screams that are all over the place! After a couple fast rounds they nicely slow things down a bit as McCall shows us he can sing a bit as well and the band shows us they can play some melodic stuff as well. Ling emerges out of this melancholy with some awesome shredding guitar and they segue beautifully into a heavy breakdown from here with everything sounding pretty awesome! They do an excellent job of keeping everything epic, but especially that phenomenal finish! What a true intro into what Parkway Drive is all about, I love it! Track 3 is "Dead Dreams" and I could say that these guys have a template for sure, but just like my last review, it's a pretty damn wicked baseline template with Ling leading the way with faster lead guitar, Kilpatrick and Versteeg providing the heavy rhythm section, Gordon keeping the pace with some fast and cool drums and McCall making every word sound epicly heavy and he could go high or low at any moment! Ling has another shredding bit which sounds pretty sweet and they do an awesome part where they move into a heavy breakdown, and then breakdown within that breakdown! The even slower, sludgy guitars sound so heavy and awesome, these guys already seem pretty wicked! The next track is "Flesh, Bone And Weakness" and they start it off with a quiet but epic introduction that smoothly builds up until Ling takes over with a pretty heavy and sweet guitar riff and everyone else gets behind him to make for yet another pretty awesome main riff with all kinds of good guitars and all kinds of awesome screaming by McCall as well! Words couldn't properly do justice to all the cool music that is packed into this five-plus minute song and it never lets up at any point! They're either breaking it down or shredding it up the whole way through and they combine these two elements so fucking nicely! This is definitely my favourite song so far and at the very end it fades into the sound of waves crashing as they roll right into track 5, "The Cruise". It's an instrumental song just under two minutes and Ling and Kilpatrick play off each other really nicely on this one as they combine two similar light guitar riffs (one electric, one acoustic) at fast speed, but they play them slightly offbeat so you're always hearing one of them playing something. It's a cool little interlude before we're back to more typical Parkway on "You're Over" with McCall screaming low and heavy right from the get-go overtop a typical(ly pretty freaking cool) main riff. Some great drum fills.by Gordon, plenty of cool metal guitars and such epic and awesome screaming, these guys can seemingly do no wrong! Another headbanger of a breakdown midway through before returning to the fast main riff and the bar continues to be very high on this debut! Track 7 is "Looks Like Yoda", which I think is meant to be an insult, and it too follows the Parkway template which means my head is banging nice and hard right away! It checks all the boxes and some might say "all the songs sound the same", but it's another unique, super heavy song that ends on another fantastic note. The last song on the EP is the title track "Don't Close Your Eyes" and to say that it's another typical main riff just doesn't adequately describe the tremendous amount of technical and awesome metal is going on here. Ling is absolutely shredding it right from the get-go, Gordon is furiously keeping the pace on drums and Kilpatrick and Versteeg provide the heaviest rhythm section you could ask for. And what else haven't I already said about the awesomeness of Winston McCall; he's a phenomenal heavy metal vocalist! After a couple awesome rounds McCall actually screams "now break that shit down" before they indeed do break that shit down hard with Ling playing some awesome guitar! McCall has a tremendous amount of high screams at the end of the song and Ling is just shredding it overtop all the other awesomeness as things eventually and awesomely fade to a close. I think it's my favourite song on the EP, and that's saying something! What a finale!

That is the end of "Don't Close Your Eyes" and I thought it was a phenomenal debut EP by Parkway Drive! These guys are exploding with all kinds of awesome metal and they mix faster shredding parts with super heavy slower breakdowns to perfection! Winston McCall is also one hell of a singer and I cannot wait to hear the first full album from these guys! What an amazing debut EP!