Album Review: Parkway Drive-Atlas

A recurring theme of surprise has been occurring for the past weeks while I've been checking out new records. I have had lowered or no expectations for each of the past few records I've checked out and each and every one of them has stunned with me the quality. The most recent record to do this is the new Parkway Drive album Atlas, which I expected to be decent at best, but ended up being a very worthwhile release.

Atlas doesn't radically change Parkway Drive's sound, it just adds some more experimentation and improves upon the elements that were already present in their sound. There is a bit more of a focus on melody on this  record and less of a focus on bombarding the listener with breakdown after breakdown ("Old Ghosts/New Regrets and "Snake Oil and Holy Water" are the lone exceptions to that and those are easily the two worst tracks on this record) which I found to be a good decision. The breakdowns are still present, they are just used more sparingly compared to their previous record Deep Blue, which I felt was the first Parkway Drive album to abuse breakdowns. The build-up and use of Luke Killpatrick's excellent melodic riffing makes the breakdowns much more effective when they are used (The breakdown at the end of "Wild Eyes" is a prime example). The new-found experimentation adds up to some of the most exciting and ambitious material Parkway Drive has made to date. "The River" shines with it's clean female vocal parts, spoken word sections, almost bluesy guitarwork at times, and beautifully melodic tone throughout. The heavy use of gang vocals in the aforementioned "Wild Eyes", the presence of violin in "Atlas", and the piano and acoustic guitar driven intro "Sparks" caught me by surprise and were pretty much the last thing I expected to hear on a Parkway Drive album. Don't worry Parkway Drive fans this isn't an entirely new band, the same elements that gained them popularity as a band are still very much in play. Most importantly, Winston McCall is still one of the best vocalists in the genre and probably the strongest asset Parkway Drive has as a band. His vocals are very much rooted in old-school hardcore and metalcore and it's always cool to see someone still doing those type of vocals in a scene that has very much moved away from that style. As I said earlier, Luke Kilpatrick still knows how to write some damn good riffs. There is just as many good chug/groove riffs on here as there is melodic riffs. One of the few issues I have with this record actually is that there is too few solos from him. He writes great solos and the few that are on here are quite solid, but I felt his skilled solowork was underutilized just a bit on this record.

The quality of Atlas is still a bit shocking to me. I thought they at peaked at Horizons and weren't going to come anywhere close again. While not quite on the level of Horizons, Atlas is way closer than I thought they would get for the rest of their career. They improved on the flaws of Deep Blue and added some more depth to their sound while simultaneously staying true to their roots. I haven't been this high on Parkway Drive in years and hopefully Atlas is a sign that Parkway Drive isn't going to fade away from the metalcore world anytime soon.

4/5 Stars
Standout Tracks
1.The River
2.Wild Eyes
3.Dream Run