Photo: Liz Hainsworth
Thursday began like any other: get up, neck copious amounts of coffee, get on an aeroplane, touch down in Copenhagen, Denmark. Well, not quite like any other. But why this midweek venture across land and sea? Two words - Parkway Drive.
Arriving at Vega, which we now know to be the happiest and friendliest venue in the world where they blast out 'Bohemian Rhapsody' between bands, we eagerly await the star attraction whom evaded the mainstream UK festival scene last year (luckily, you can catch them at Reading + Leeds this summer).
In the loaded darkness of this intimate space, one word rumbles louder and louder until it floods the stage and finds fuel in the crowd, ‘Destroy’. The floor to ceiling blood-red veil unleashes a Phantom of the Operaesque figure - seemingly ten feet tall, frontman Winston McCall and guitarist Luke "Pig" Kilpatrick march forward to the call of the crowd. Precisely commanding his audience of puppets with tens of strings per millimetre of his fingers. ‘Destroyer’ quickly gives way to the rest of more than a decades worth of relentless records - and an energy surge to rival all the bright lights of Times Square.
As 'Karma' comes through, McCall inhabits the stance of an unlikely Apostle backlit with tones of orange and red to rival- the master of ceremonies on this momentous and righteous night. On to the next, and McCall shares a thought as if letting us into a secret as a supposedly new track comes through, though most seem to be familiar with one of it’s many hooks, "Give it all you've got". This is 'Vice Grip'.
The time has come where we are faced with a choice; a new favourite or an unbeatable classic. The crowd roars and riyals to earn their track over their other. “We’ll do both” McCall announces, “but the deal is you have to sing and you have to move.” Well sir, we’ll take that and raise you a circle pit.
"This isn’t the heaviest, it's not the fastest but we need you to sing this one with is," McCall tells us in a soft tone. 'Home is for the Heartless' rings out, met with rapture by those left standing. Over a decade in the making and this band are yet to disappoint, they even seem incapable of doing so. Put simply, Parkway Drive are the gift that keeps on giving, and giving, and giving.
Parkway Drive played:
Destroyer
Dying to Believe
Carrion
Karma
Dark Days
Idols and Anchors
Dedicated
Deliver Me
Wild Eyes
Swing
Bottom Feeder
Vice Grip
Romance is Dead
Crushed
Home is for the Heartless
