Parkway Drive - Reverence



Parkway Drive have been the subject of a pretty standard amount of criticism that seems to come with a so-called “core band” rising up to achieve significant success these days, and to a degree it’s understandable, as they don’t exactly revolutionize the genre and they do indeed indulge in some of the less adored tendencies of the genre. I mean, aside from Winston McCall’s ability to sometimes sound a lot like Randy Blythe, what really separates Parkway Drive from the rest of the metalcore crop from this decade or the last in terms of musicality?
Aside from the instances of dabbling in more widely appealing, but shallow musical ideas, the strong moments on Reverence show why Parkway Drive has gradually climbed to the higher (or at least more mainstream) ranks of metalcore. At their best, they can write up some tight grooves and attention-grabbing melodies. Nevertheless, after the mild novelty of the album’s tracks wears off, the album becomes a real chore to listen to.
“Wishing Wells” and “Prey” start the album off decently, but not on quite a strong enough foot with more traditional metalcore and groove metal for the most part, dabbling in some Gothenburg-style melodic guitar work. The writing isn’t exactly the most exciting on these songs, though, even for slightly above average metalcore. “Absolute Power” ups the genuine heaviness immediately afterward, luckily, and leaves a lasting impression of its tasty down-tuned guitar groove despite the corny “truth drops like a bomb” line. But the album soon loses it footing in a variety of strategically strange and unflattering plays. 
“The Void” is a particularly glaring example of the band’s rather un-special ventures into melodic (relatively radio-friendly) metalcore, its gruff sing-songy chorus giving me flashbacks to bad 2000′s metalcore. “Shadow Boxing” is another weak link that made me feel like I was listening to a throwaway workout  anthem from Five Finger Death Punch’s American Capitalist (so, on par with their new material), riddled with these cheesy strings that don’t really add to the song’s emotion as much as they do signal that you’re supposed to be feeling some kind of motivation. It has potential with its catchy enough groove, but its ultimately dragging length keeps it from reaching any real emotional connection.
“I Hope You Rot” and “In Blood” make themselves stand out from the other tracks on the album via their prominent Swedish melodeath guitar styling, but in the grand scheme of things outside the album, it’s not exactly enough to make either of them lasting enough to be worthy of excessive praise. The second-to-last track “Chronos” takes a similar approach but comes up relatively empty-handed despite its extensive length.
I can appreciate the band’s musicianship and their ability to work themselves into a decent variety of song types, but so much of the album sounds like the band is shooting for a wider appeal and simply playing into the formula that it requires without really doing all too much ambitious. The talent is there, but the album sounds like a déjà vu of metalcore that was popular in the mid-to-late 2000′s.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zeal & Ardor - Stranger Fruit

Image
Even though it had been in on their Bandcamp page since 2016, I was glad the more official release of Zeal & Ardor’s debut album,  Devil Is Fine , last year gave me the opportunity to talk about it (since I started this blog in 2017). Originally one of multiple solo music projects by creative eccentric Manuel Gagneux, inspired by a comical suggestion on 4Chan, Gagneux recruited ful-time members to form a complete performing band after the huge wave  Devil Is Fine  made, and I have been so pleased to see this project grow in its short time from the enthusiasm much of the metal community has shown for such an unorthodox artist. Devil Is Fine  was a short, but wildly diverse album (only 25 minutes) that blended the soulful blues of slave spirituals and other American folk with varyingly atmospheric black metal, a idea that could have gone terribly that fortunately went terrifically. While I loved  Devil Is Fine  and had it as one of my top top favorit...
Read more

Pensées Nocturnes - Grand Guignol Orchestra

Image
I have stated my distaste for the overdone try-hard edginess of the dark carnival aesthetic in film and television (and separating the band Avatar from that aesthetic has been a necessary task for me to prepare myself for their music), but something about applying it to the self-aware campiness of metal had me kind of intrigued to see what the exaggerated horror of metal could do for the often butchered scary circus aesthetic. I mentioned not too long ago that metal has always had its foot in parody through excess, and after all, isn’t the whole carnival thing supposed to be excessively cartoonish itself too? Maybe it could work. And that seems to be the hypothesis by which Pensées Nocturnes have approached this album. Pensées Nocturnes are a french band who have been rather prolific over the past decade,  Grand Guignol Orchestra  being the group’s sixth full-length album over the course of their decade-long existence. And the band have consistently sought to tinker and ...
Read more

Saor - Forgotten Paths

Image
Just as the new year delivered a new pair of Panopticon songs, so it gave us a new album from Andy Marshall’s Saor, a similarly naturalistic and folky solo project blending Scottish, rather than Appalachian, folk music with the transcendence of ambient black metal. In the visceral energy of this typically dark music form, Marshall finds strength and fortitude in the connection he makes with it to the natural world. Despite Marshall’s tendency toward sprawling compositions, their presentation of only three of them with one short outro cut to round them off clocks  Forgotten Paths  in at just over thrity-eight minutes. And in those thirty-eight minutes, Marshall really doesn’t do much more than channel the basic essence of his project. The opening title song jumps into the rushing swells of blast beats and black metal tremolo picking turned inside out to channel the silent emphatic resilience of the natural world itself portrayed so romantically in the song’s lyrics, soon e...
Read more