Parkway Drive Deep Blue

By the time of Deep Blue’s release in 2010, Parkway Drive had come a long way from sifting through the slow-burning embers of metalcore on 2005 debut Killing with a Smile to refire what defined them on 2007’s Horizons. Wisely taking an extended period of three years prior to unveiling Deep Blue to hammer lessons learned into a singing blade of genuine craft, the Byron Bay quintet’s third record remains their most critically acclaimed release. Widely hailed as a new chapter in metalcore’s evolution at the time, this was chiefly due to one major development in the band’s songwriting nous. A new-found sense of dynamism now made the heaviness of pacing barnstormers such as “Deliver Me” and “Karma” more compulsive in isolation than numbing in totality—a refreshing epoch of listenability that was particularly pronounced on lone lead single “Sleepwalker”’s bemoaning of social isolation—and extends to the album as a whole. “Home Is for the Heartless” even subverted Horizons favourite “Carrion” as the most deftly melodic and anthemic Parkway Drive had yet to be—though by the very same contrast driving Deep Blue’s appeal, vocalist Winston McCall had never sounded more possessed than on “Pressures”.