The new record from Australian metalcore band Parkway Drive has been one of the most anticipated of the year, since the release of the song ‘Vice Grip’ showed a fairly big shift in sound, although admittedly not an unexpected one. The decision to add more general heavy metal influences and branch out into a more accessible sound is certainly not one that is uncommon in the metalcore world right now, with several of the genre’s biggest bands making similar changes on their latest releases.
Ire is fairly consistent in the way that it only seems to express one feeling from beginning to end: the sort of entirely fabricated anger and sense of artificial energy that makes you really want to punch someone in the fucking throat for about fifteen minutes, before your brain realises that the music shows no signs of changing tone and decides to stop pumping floods of adrenaline around your system before it kills you. For all the attention it demands with its vicious opening songs, it ends up kicking and screaming impotently in the corner like a child without an ice-cream by about the fifth track. And that’s about it, really, until you get the odd twenty seconds of relief in the form of a generic intro sample.
If you’re a fan of the slicker side of modern metalcore, Ire will no doubt be very enjoyable for you. Every riff is so thick and punchy and layered with melodic hooks and lead lines that it manages to stay catchy and infectious without sacrificing too much heaviness, with the majority of the vocals harsh screams and growls. Album opener ‘Destroyer’ and lead single ‘Vice Grip’ hammer through with straight up heavy-metal riffs (the latter evoking bands like Scorpions and Accept), albeit adorned with definitively modern production and vocals. ‘Dying To Believe’ takes a more groove-oriented route with one of the heaviest breakdowns on the record. Is it loaded with sing-along crowd moments? Of course. Are there enough heavy pit-worthy sections? Plenty. Does it have enough lyrical anger to last an entire adolescence? You fucking bet.
It’s from here that the cracks in the album begin to show. ‘Crushed’ and ‘Writings on the Wall’ attempt to shift the tone of the record to something darker and slower, but both songs (especially the latter, with its awkward sounding juxtaposition of aggressive vocals and dull sluggish riffs) end up just sounding boring with neither really having enough creativity or believability behind them to match up to the dramatic lyrics and vocals. ‘Bottom Feeder’ and ‘The Sound of Violence’ et al. simply add to the pile of pit-ready metalcore songs that do nothing to stand out from the rest of pack, and by this point the band’s somewhat generic formula is beginning to wear incredibly thin. Album closer ‘A Deathless Song’ perhaps brings the band’s melodic and emotive side out the most, with almost Blind Guardian-esque folky riffs and acoustic guitars included throughout the song – but once again the gruff vocals over the quiet sections sound too overstated to take seriously. Winston McColl’s performance is something of a double-edged sword: his growls and screams are generally fantastic, but several songs are nearly ruined by failed attempts to experiment with semi-spoken word or semi-growling passages. The lyrics, besides a handful of cliché abominations are mainly passable, but the constant generalised fury and self-empowerment doesn’t really offer up anything that metal bands haven’t been re-hashing for decades.
After about five songs of any record of this nature I usually begin to need to listen to something gloriously un-catchy and badly produced to feel a little less like I have a man in a vest telling me to jump up and down and go fucking crazy. There are only a few songs on this record that don’t immediately trigger that craving – and those offer little else in terms of emotion or interest. It’s not outwardly bad as such, but for an album that explodes with so much antagonism and cut-throat intensity early on, it ultimately fails to back up it’s on bravado and ends up feeling like just one more generic metal album.
Words by Joe Gilbertson
@PAST0DON