Parkway Drive Drop Massive New Tune, 'Wishing Wells'

If you're waiting for Parkway Drive to return to the sound of 'Killing With A Smile' & 'Horizons', then you're going to be waiting for a long time. 

Not even a full month off from the band’s stacked ‘A Decade Of Horizons’ Australian tour, Parkway Drive are hitting back hard today with their mighty new single, ‘Wishing Wells’.

Armed with a dark spoken-word and acoustic opening section, Winston McCall's always savage vocals, tough-as-fuck riffs throughout, some of the band's best lead guitar work in years, a more “metal” sound overall, along with some strong Rammstein influences cutting through, ‘Wishing Wells’ feels like the natural progression from the style of 2015’s solid yet divisive LP, ‘Ire’. All the while still retaining Parkway's stadium rock festival rock/metal sound of the past few years, but without going full Bon Jovi like 'Vice Grip' did.

Of course, I can definitely see why many people won’t like this new track; from the ever so slightly cringey lyrics, the Australian twang in McCall's spoken word vocals, the simplistic and cheap accompanying video, and the “WWE’s next big theme song” written all over it. Even so, I actually quite like 'Wishing Wells'! And what I enjoy the most about this new song is that it's more or less another curveball from the Byron Bay champions, showing that even after 15 years of leading the game, they're still willing and trying to do new things and expand their sound outwards and not just simply live in metalcore's yesteryear. Which is fucking great to see, honestly.

As McCall said in a recent studio video diary, "Going into making this record, we had one goal. The goal was to make something 100% Parkway but something that will 100% stand on its own two feet. What we set out to do on Ire was a complete step into the dark and really dive completely into the deep end. This time around, I think the deep end is where we're comfortable." Which is a statement that makes me both nervous yet also very excited about their upcoming sixth record, which should more than likely drop sometime later this year via Resist Records.

Check out 'Wishing Wells' below. Did you love this new track or did you outright hate it? Or maybe you just don't care because you're stuck back in 2007 and only listen to 'Horizons' and 'Killing With A Smile'?

Header PC: Owen Jones (Digital Beard).

Check out our gallery and live review of Parkway's mammoth, sold out Melbourne Forum show here.