Review Summary: Only reverential towards pain
Music elicits a reaction. It crawls its way into the deepest regions of your mind when you first hear it, taking your focus away from the tangible world. As such, music is at its worst when one sits back, listens, and feels nothing. When one feels nothing, not even the faint, but still present, familiarity that comes when a sound is ingrained into your being, the music has failed. That is where I have found myself with Parkway Drive’s new album, Reverence.
“Wishing Wells” leaves me wishing that simply for the sake of enjoying the song, I could identify with the rage that comes across in the song. Perhaps it is because I have grown apart from this genre, but the rage that permeates this song and the rest of the album seems forced. It is difficult to tell on a track like Prey, for example, the band’s emotive identity. Winston is at once singing (speaking? It is difficult to tell) of having “an axe to grind,” and having a “crooked mind,” but the chorus is so upbeat, almost gleefully catchy.
That is not to say that contrasting musical sounds are bad. However, for all the music writers out there, do not compose such sounds as Parkway features here. Indeed, be especially aware of writing meaningless, murky, and unattractive empty spaces that do not sound in any way appealing. And then juxtapose such empty sounds with sounds that crash into one’s senses, barraging them with anger.
My primary problem with this album is just that. On this release, Parkway feels incredibly out of sync with their previous selves. Parkway Drive was never a “happy” band by any means. “Wild Eyes” has a music video set in a dystopia, and “Dark Days” is, simply put, about how the world is falling apart. That said, the listener can find within the music a conviction within themselves. Instead of violently lashing out with clouded vision, Parkway found joy and inspiration in the struggle. Such an attitude came across in the band’s music up to this point. This album is, on the other hand, only reverential towards pain, and it comes across that way sonically.
The guitars sound fantastic, but music is not just how an instrument sounds. Rather, fantastic music is just as dynamic as it is singular, just as consistent as it is ever-changing. Parkway forgets this here. “Absolute Power” features a breakdown that certainly hits hard, but it does not cut, as the guitars are the only instrument being utilized, and in an overly simplistic way at that. “Cemetery Bloom” is moreso 3 minutes and 10 seconds of directionless gloom than anything blooming, and “The Void” features the same problem as “Prey,” a chorus that is attempting to sound triumphant, while being accompanied by versus centralized on “a world of pain.”
Parkway also utilizes numerous musical features that come across as gimmicky in their quest to seem serious about pain. To be brief, the spoken word, the weird chanting on “I Hope You Rot,” and pseudo-rapping on “Shadow Boxing” all fall significantly short. Perhaps these features would be well-suited on another album, but they do not work for Parkway, especially when the song structures and rhythms are depressingly repetitive.
Change has become a buzzword in recent months throughout the music community. A question of how bands who achieved their fame around 2010-2013 as members of an emerging rock sound can change has arisen. Parkway has certainly heard this question and responded in kind. That is to be respected. Unfortunately, I must join those labeling this album, Parkway’s proposed solution, as ineffective.
