In 2022, Darker Still saw Parkway Drive carry its transformation to its conclusion. The Australian band’s seventh album moves even further from the metalcore of the origins to embrace a classic, broad and melodic heavy metal, where Winston McCall’s clean singing takes a central place. More ambitious, more varied, sometimes almost theatrical, the record testifies to a band no longer afraid of anything, ready to explore uncharted territory. Welcomed at the top of the Australian charts, Darker Still confirms the quintet’s place among the heavyweights of contemporary metal.
The voice unleashed
The great revelation of Darker Still is the scale taken by Winston McCall’s singing. Long confined to screaming, the frontman ventures here toward broad melodies, lyrical flights, an unprecedented expressiveness. The title track, a genuine epic ballad several minutes long, illustrates this shift on its own, while tracks like Glitch and The Greatest Fear combine power and a sense of the chorus. This new vocal breath opens unprecedented possibilities for the band, even at the risk of disorienting fans of the first period. A major artistic bet, carried through to the end.
The legacy of great metal
On Darker Still, Parkway Drive embraces its classic influences more than ever. You hear the echo of heavy metal’s big names, flamboyant guitar solos, ambitious structures, a monumental production. The band no longer seeks to tick the boxes of metalcore, but to compose genuine set pieces, built to last. That rise in ambition is not without risk: some will miss the raw savagery of the beginnings, others will salute the courage of a band refusing to repeat itself. One thing is certain, Parkway Drive keeps moving forward, without ever looking back.
The giant embraced
In terms of success, Darker Still extended the band’s triumphant trajectory, settling at the top of the sales chart in Australia and consolidating its international stature. The concerts, ever more spectacular, finished making Parkway Drive one of the major bands of the big world festivals. The album divides, like every new stage of this metamorphosis, but it confirms the coherence of an evolution begun nearly a decade earlier. The Byron Bay quintet is no longer a metalcore band: it is a metal giant, with all the ambition and excess that implies.
Darker Still is the logical culmination of the road travelled since Ire, the record where Parkway Drive fully embraces its new identity. More melodic, more varied, more ambitious than ever, it may unseat the nostalgics of the early metalcore, but it seduces with its daring and its generosity. The band proves here that it is not done reinventing itself, that it always prefers risk to the easy path. Peak or excess, depending on one’s sensibility, it will remain the testimony of a free band, tracing its own road with no concern for labels. The latest chapter, for now, of a fascinating transformation.
