Rating: 4/5
Verdict: Best yet from Australia's most brutal band
You'd expect Australia's answer to Jack Johnson to come out of the sunny beach mecca of Byron Bay, not the brutish brilliance of a band like Parkway Drive.
In the past eight years they have gigged constantly and although debut Killing With A Smile and follow up Horizons were solid, those releases have nothing on the powerful, booming and relentless rampage of latest album Deep Blue.
It's a bold claim, but the melodic and mangled metal they conjure up here puts them on a par with a band like Lamb of God - the fact their show at the Studio in September has already sold out might have something to do with that.
A song like Unrest has an unhinged scrappiness to it, but then it snaps into a tight groove, with many pummelling tempo changes; Sleepwalker bounces around like a sprightly, demented jackhammer with vicious and nasty vocals as a menacing accomplice; and just when you think it can't get any more knee-capping and heavy, along comes Deadweight, which starts out nice and frilly, then takes off like some lunatic has been let loose with a nail gun.
On centrepiece Alone, these kids, who have a background in dynamic and tense hardcore, reveal a slower, more, um, sensitive side (if distant subtle yowls can be counted). But really, there is no let-up, from the bludgeoning and cathartic Deliver Me to the breakneck riff frenzy of Karma this is powerful and heavy stuff.
- TimeOut
