![]() The lead work throughout is also phenomenal, with the song’s final cathartic solo giving lead guitarist Jeff Ling the worthy “Fade to Black” moment he so clearly craves. While McCall isn’t the strongest singer, his sullen delivery works well here. The title track is a predominantly clean-sung dirge, backed by whistles and an acoustic guitar. The album is most interesting at its most idiosyncratic. Each individual instance is well crafted and entertaining, but the the continued reuse of specific elements from recent records and even songs within the album itself leave Darker Still feeling like it’s retreading rather than breaking new ground. Its use of symphonics also arguably cheapens the distinctive texture they brought to Reverence, as does Darker Still‘s continuing and more blatant lyrical focus on religion. The stomping verse riff of “Land of the Lost” is also exceedingly similar to that of live-staple “Crushed”, and awkwardly titled album closer “From the Heart of the Darkness” is cut from a similar cloth, …except with a wah-drenched solo and “Bottom Feeder”-style beatdown at the end. ![]() ![]() The same can be said about the end of “Greatest Fear”, whose the sullen delivery of “In death…” during its build-up sounds exceedingly similar to the one of “In time…” at the end of Reverence‘s “Chronos”, so that while it constitutes Darker Still‘s most complex and compositionally ambitious offering, it also comes across as its most expected and uninspired. It’s bouncy closing beatdown, however, sounds almost identical to that of regular set-closer “Bottom Feeder” even sharing a similar mosh-call and tempo change. “Glitch” more effectively builds on the distinctive riffing style of Deep Blue‘s “Sleepwalker” by mixing it with a compelling nu metal bounce that manages to overcomes it’s rather cliche lyrical content through another massive, sing-along chorus and captivating verse melody. The lyrics to “Like Napalm” also recycle the bomb-dropping imagery from “Ground Zero” and Reverence‘s “Absolute Power” so that it seems like more of a crutch than a knowing callback. ![]() Similarly, obligatory second-track rager, “Like Napalm” erupts in a flurry of wah effects, which are both original and invigorating, but the prevalence and arguable overuse of the wah throughout the rest of Darker Still again detracts from its singularity. None pop nearly as hard, however, and the saturation of the style rather takes away from its memorability. The majority of the album’s songs are built around the kind of folky heavy metal guitar lead that made “Prey” such a stand out on Reverence. Yet, for all its oddities, there’s something unshakably safe about the ostensibly confronting Darker Still. It’s an oddly comforting moment, and here’s plenty more throughout the record that provide similar reassurance as Parkway Drive take you through yet another album that’s a far cry from the earl-2000s Byron Bay hardcore scene that birthed them. The awkwardly clean-sung, lullabye-like opening of “Ground Zero” can be confronting on first listen, but it’s not long – thirty seconds to be exact – before frontman Winston McCall switches into a harsher gear with a roar of “Explode” and the rest of the band drop the beat like the proverbial time bomb he was warning you about all along, and it’s only another sixty before you’ll screaming the same refrain along with him at the top of your lungs. The majority of Darker Still sees Parkway Drive firing on all cylinders. Yet, while broadly successful in its execution, the album also sees Parkway Drive beginning to repeat themselves somewhat. It’s follow-up, the suggestively-titled Darker Still, is a similarly ambitious affair that solidifies the Byron Bay bruisers’ transition from rabid, riff-driven hardcore to anthemic arena metal. It couldn’t have happened to a better or more deserving band and, although any mainstream ascension inevitably invites accusations of “selling out” or “watering down” a sound for commercial gain, Parkway Drive handily refuted such allegations by making Reverence (2018) one of the darkest, most ambitious, complex and – let’s not forget – best albums of their career. Watching Parkway Drive go from playing the kinds of suburban all-ages gigs my friends and I would go and throw down to every other weekend in highschool to worldwide arena and festival headlining superstars has been one of the most satisfying things I’ve witnessed throughout a lifetime of listening to and documenting heavy music.
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