Twenty years of Parkway Drive – now already twenty-two – and the band is still going full throttle on their anniversary tour. The first leg of the 20 Year Anniversary Tour in Europe is already history, but at the end of October, the journey continues: through their ever-growing discography, nostalgic moments with songs from their debut album Killing With A Smile, and an explosive live show.
The band’s latest album, Darker Still, has now had three years to find a permanent place in your playlist. Even before its release, we spoke with vocalist Winston McCall in 2022 to take a deep dive into Darker Still and its connection to Parkway Drive’s early years and Killing With A Smile. Three years later, we’re looking back once more, as the album has truly settled into fans’ hearts. Especially in light of their anniversary, it’s fascinating to see that the concept behind Darker Still had already been in Parkway Drive’s minds since the very beginning of the band. In this conversation, Winston McCall shares more insight into that!
Photo: @juulia_knipst
What’s the basic meaning behind the title “Darker Still”?
"Darker Still is based around the concept of "The Dark Night of the Soul", which is esoteric, concept of coming to a point in your life when you are confronted with an event or an encounter which forces you to have destroyed or destroys all the way down to your core, your sense of self, and your belief system and everything that you, as a person, define. It defines you. So you're left with just emptiness and the journey going forward after that, to the new life and the new sense of who you are. And that jounney through the darkness.
When we came to do it, I had the title and I was like, 'I know the last record was pretty dark, but this one's gonna be told "darker still". Because that's what life is. The more you take on in the universe around you, the smaller you feel, the scarier things become, the more isolated you are, the closer to death - you're never going backwards. Just saying 'Look at the light, be happy!' is not a healthy way. It doesn't bring you fulfillment. You have to look at the darkness and comprehend a different way of viewing the world and walk through it and experience that, to be able to come to a place of genuine happiness and genuine sense of fulfillment. And that's what it is, it always grows darker. And that's not necessarily bad, it just is."
In comparison to your first album “Killing With A Smile”, and from your perspective, how has your music and the band changed?
"Massively. I mean, it's like, the band is us. This music is a reflection of what we give, and every time we give something, we give a piece of ourselves to this band. It takes a part of you to create this and you're putting it down in blood, weat and tears and time and passion and inspiration and everything. It's 20 years worth of human growth. [...] We don't forget anything that we do. At no point in time is it about replacing something, it's about adding on top of it. We would not be able to make the album we've made now, if we hadn't made 'Killing With A Smile'. And 'Horizons', and 'Deep Blue', and 'Atlas, and 'Ire', and 'Reverence'. It's all this part of this growth, character building process for us. [gestures with his hand] 'Killing With A Smile' is over here, new album is over here. There's a lifetime between them. But they're still connected."
You’ve stated that “Darker Still” is the vision Parkway Drive had in mind since founding the band. What do you mean by that and why is now the right time?
"When we finished creating this album, like ... there is a difference between when we started a band and with the music that we listened to which we admired, and what we could actually create. There's a gulf between of experience and knowlegde. That's why no one starts out and it's just like - first album: Black Album., straight away. It takes time to be able to do, to learn how to create these pieces of music that we look at as iconic, which are incredibly masterful creations.
We did what was achievable to us and what we what we were really interested, which was reachable and relatable, and have evolved ever since that. The music that we created when we started, we absolutely loved and related to in a very personal way, because that's where we're at.
Best reference that I can give is Jeff's favorite album is Metallica, self titled album, Black Album. That was still his favorite album when we started as a band. We still looked at that in a way of 'How the hell do you make music like that? Like, that's special.'
And we've attempted to do things on this album in a similar way in terms of send our minds, and imagine things of a scope and of a nature which are more in line with that bigger way of thinking. Which is 20 years, it's taken us 20 years of growth to b able to even understand how that kind of music is attempted."
The full interview is available here:
