80%
Probably because the only expectations they’ve most tried to live up to have been their own, Parkway Drive has continued to confound everyone but themselves.
While the mainstream of the industry in their home country continues to overlook them or at the very most offer some kind of curled-lip sneer, Parkway has continued its march toward their seemingly impossible destiny. It will be interesting to see if Darker Still can take them another step closer. As far back as Atlas, Parkway Drive were dabbling with strings, female backing vocals and acoustics; Ire and then Reverence added further sonic depth as they leaned into and finally embraced the metal band buried within.
Darker Still is the band’s most ambitious effort to date, as it should be this from a band this far into a career, but some of it doesn’t quite come off perhaps as well as they could have hoped.
Plenty of the hallmark Parkway Drive elements are staunchly in place. Tracks like Imperial Heretic, Like Napalm and the fearsome Soul Bleach retain the seismic metalcore crunch and rhythmic drive that is the core of their sound, laced with insistent Jeff Ling melody lines. Winston McCall’s bellow is as huge as ever, delving deeper into a death-like growl in places. It’s his regular singing voice that still needs some development.
The Greatest Fear is a towering epic, a dark and majestic masterpiece built around a huge cascading riff and a circular melody with Ling pulling some of the moves of his career. Glitch throws the first curveball with a bouncy, early 00s nu-metal vibe that on repeated listenings evolves into one of their more interesting songs as it shifts in character and intensity. On the other hand, with If a God Can Bleed they try their hand at a percussion-driven pseudo-industrial march, McCall groaning and half-rapping his way through it. It’s jarring and completely out-of-character for this band and a strange inclusion that adds nothing.
On the title track Parkway Drive calls off all bets, throwing everything they have into the album’s enormous centrepiece. Darker Still builds from clean guitar lines and whistling, strings sawing behind pensive vocals to epic riff territory onto which Ling stamps his authority with a classic metal-era solo. It’s a play for a metal style super-ballad in the vein of Cemetery Gates or Fade to Black but whether they’ve actually pulled it off will depend on how one appreciates Winston McCall’s weird singing voice.
Darker Still‘s real star is Ling. He may never make a list of the world’s greatest guitarists but he makes this album his own, peppering the songs with leads and hooks that add a further metallic dimension to his band’s stomp and crunch. Seven albums in, Parkway Drive are clearly at the height of their power and showing no sign of slowing down any time soon, even if they have overplayed their hand just a little here.