Parkway Drive Killing With A Smile Label: Epitaph Release Date:08/22/2006

I’m not even going to lie, I would be way into this if it were 1998 or whatever year it was when bands like Poison the Well were hot, but now it’s 2006 and there are so many of these bands circling around and pecking at the dead carcass of metalcore that most of this genre is almost unbearable for me to listen to. My distaste for new metalcore might also have something to do with the fact my roommate listens to nothing but As I Lay Dying and Trivium round-the-clock; a girl can only take so much.

I’m happy to report that Parkway Drive are probably one of the better new-ish metalcore bands I’ve heard. Like a lot of recent bands of this genre, the band is much more “metal” than they are “core.” For example, they totally rip-off other bands that rip-off At the Gates, which is nothing original, but I’m always more apt to like a band if they have some nice Gothenburg-style leads. They also have some Cookie Monster vocals thrown in a couple of the songs, which was a huge relief.

The worst thing about these new metalcore bands is that emotional singing they employ in every song for every chorus and I didn’t hear that once on this whole record; it was refreshing as hell and ultimately made me decide I might actually like this a little. The band isn’t treading any new ground and would probably be playing Promise Ring-style emo if it were 10 years ago because that was the sound that all the kids were buying, but at least they aren’t lame-ing the sound with cornball vocals trying to sound like Scott Stapp.

If you’re totally into this style I would get this record, just because it’s so much better than everything I’ve heard the past couple of years and even though the style is nothing new there really are some decent breakdowns and technical parts. If you’re not into this I don’t need to tell you to stay away because you’re probably old enought to the the differnce between these guys and bands you already like and own records by; bands that created this whole style.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 27th, 2006 at 9:09 pm and is filed under CD/LP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.