Album of the Week #21.

 

Parkway Drive- Don’t Close Your Eyes.

This first and by far the best Parkway Drive album release (OK, technically it’s an EP but it’s easier to write it like that), Don’t Close Your Eyes is full of riffs, beatdowns and unbelievable awesomeness. The album opens with a pretty intense intro which I assume is sampled from a film. Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em is my personal favourite opening with an intense riff followed immediately by chugging fury- this song is just full or brief but brilliant beatdowns. The drums are ferocious and relentless teamed with the spidery guitars and screaming vocals. I love the riff towards the end of this track- for me it summarises Parkway Drive perfectly and this song closes with the third and final beatdown, intense.  For me this album is all about the guitars from sharp riffs, grim beatdowns, dirty chugs and wild widdling it’s all in there for me. Another favourite of mine is Flesh, Bone and Weakness which opens with an awesome bass riff- I love how this song builds up in contrast to some of the crashing song intros on this album. The Cruise opens with the sound of waves breaking and some stunning acoustic guitar- this is a beautiful instrumental which totally holds its own in the middle of the crashing fury of the other tracks. Album closer Don’t Close Your Eyes is another awesome track with some of my fave Parkway riffs in it flowing from fast to slow chugs. The beatdown on this track is unbelievable – there’s some quality guitar on this track too with seemingly endlessly changing solos and overlays.

This album introduced me to so many other bands- my boyfriend first bought Don’t Close Your Eyes when visiting family in Austrailia back in the day and lent it to me and that was pretty much it for me. I’m not really a fan of Killing With A Smile (2006) but I really love Horizons (2007- check out The Siren’s Song, Carrion and Boneyards) and Deep Blue (2010- check out Sleepwalker) is a fairly good album- but none of them top this for me unfortunately. I dunno what you’d call Parkway Drive, maybe post-hardxcore; you can definitely see the hardxcore influences but I think some of the guitar has a Thin Lizzy type sound to it tbh. I hate trying to categorise music because it, especially metal, pretty much has all the same influences but bands just take them in a different direction. I actually have the bonus version of Don’t Close Your Eyes cause the original is hard to get hold of but I’ve just reviewed the 8 track EP here. Check it out.