A Short History Of Parkway Drive
Parkway Drive is a metalcore band formed in 2002 in New South Wales, Australia. They currently have three released albums: Killing With A Smile, Horizons, and Deep Blue. They also have great Parkway Drive merch for their legions of fans to wear.
Byron Bay, the hometown where the band was exactly started, is actually a very peaceful, quiet and idyllic town with sandy beaches and lush tropical vegetation. It is considered by many as a backpacker’s top destination down under. Therefore it comes as a big surprise to learn that a metalcore band like Parkway Drive would be formed from this village.
The band has for its members: Winston McCall at vocals, Jeff Ling and Luke Kilpatrick playing guitars, Ben Gordon in charge of percussion, and Jia O’Connor playing the bass guitar.
How Parkway Drive Was Started
The origin of the band’s name is pretty much straightforward. When they were formed in 2002, they were practicing in the garage of a house that was located on Parkway Drive.
Come some months after their formation, the band released a split EP together with another band which was the I Killed The Prom Queen. The EP was called the “I Killed The Prom Queen / Parkway Drive Split CD.
It was Killswitch Engage guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz who then produced the first of their Parkway Drive albums and it was titled Killing With A Smile. The album was launched in August of 2005 under Epitaph Records.
But just some months after that, their bass guitarist at that time, Shaun Cash, decided to leave the band and he was replaced by Jia O’Connor. Jia was already with the band when they kicked off their first international tour of the U.S. and Europe.
Killing With A Smile was praised by critics as containing technical musical precision that will appeal to all extreme music fans.
On October 6, 2007 the band’s next album, Horizons, was released. It contained their hit single “The Sirens’ Song” which they originally played before a crowd at Underworld a few months earlier. They immediately followed the album’s release with a tour of the United States, Europe, and Australia.
The album debuted at the number 6 spot of the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Albums Chart and also at the 27th spot of the Top Heatseekers chart.
After three long years of waiting, Deep Blue was finally released. It is the third and latest, as of to date, of their album releases and it was launched on June 29, 2010. The band recorded it in Los Angeles, California still under the Epitaph Records. It was the longest time of interval since they release another album but it was worth it as it ranked almost immediately to the 2nd spot of the ARIA charts.
Parkway Drive described this album as telling the story of a man who realized that his life was full of lies and so embarked on a journey to find the truth. He went everywhere, including at the bottom of the sea and went back again.
With their three successful albums and equally successful world tours, and not to mention the demand for their band merch, Parkway Drive is not only Australia’s most famous metalcore bands, but also among the best around the globe.
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