Parkway Drive will complete their national tour this weekend, after the recent release of their fifth album, ‘Ire’.
After releasing their single ‘Vice Grip’, Parkway Drive caused some unnecessary anxiety among their fans who worried they may be turning into a stadium-rock band.
Since the release of ‘Ire’, however, Parkway Drive have been at full speed as they've travelled around the country showcasing they can still bring the angst and depth their fans crave.
Parkway Drive drummer, Ben Gordon, says the band decided to approach things a little differently when writing ‘Ire’, and it resulted in a big, creative step forward. “We didn’t really know what we wanted to do. We just started jamming and eventually we started coming up with stuff we were really into and it just sort of flowed after that,” he says.
After being together for 12 years Parkway Drive were feeling relatively uninspired when it came time to start writing a new record. “We’re not a young band anymore, we’ve been together for 12 years and done 4 albums previous, and yeah there just comes a point when you just want to explore different avenues and we just wanted to kind of expand a little bit and become more creative and not follow the same formula that we have for our last four records.”
Since the album's release the band have toured nationally including home shows in Byron Bay. “We’ve got a sold out show in Byron (3 Oct, 2015) and we’ve actually added a second show on the Sunday (4 Oct, 2015),” Ben says.
They played the Byron Bay High School Hall, which is a very different venue from the recent stadium-sized shows they’ve been doing overseas. “I got my Year 10 certificate in that hall and now there’ll be a thousand people jumping around and moshing to my band in there,” Ben says.
“Because it’s just a hall it’s really stripped back and it’s not quite the same show I guess. So it’s not really the same show to the rest of the tour. It’s more of a raw energy kind of show.”
However, Ben has been enjoying the quality of said stadium-sized shows. “This is the first time we’ve had like real, proper production in Australia which is really good because we’ve been doing big productions for a while in Europe, but it’s always been kind of logistically impossible in Australia. So it’s really good to show what kind of show we’ve been doing in other parts of the world.
“The new songs have been amazing and it’s been really fun to play them live. That’s basically one of the biggest, I guess, inspirations, of this album as far as writing. We’re a live band, and we always have been, so we tailored these songs specifically for the live environment.”
For now Parkway Drive will continue doing what they do best in the live environment as they finish off their ‘Ire’ national tour.
'Ire' is available now.
Parkway Drive Tour Dates
Fri 9 Oct - Hordern Pavilion (Sydney)Sat 10 Oct - UC Refectory (Canberra)
Sun 11 Oct - Panthers (Newcastle)
