By Jonny Bakes and David O’Neill
Having seen both Parkway Drive and While She Sleeps at festival dates over the past few years, I was pretty keen to see what impact their live show would have in a closed arena. Little did I know that when Parkway Drive first announced their ÜK tour, that it would be nearly three years before it could actually go ahead! But the long wait was finally over as I made my way across to Manchester for a night of metalcore madness!
First to hit the stage are Lorna Shore, who seem like a slightly odd fit for the lineup as, while there’s likely a fair bit of crossover in fanbases, they might be a little bit extreme for some fans. This is perhaps why the crowd is a little bit thin to start with as Lorna Shore blast through a relatively short setlist of some of their biggest hitters from the latest EP and upcoming album ‘Pain Remains”. One thing that certainly stands out is the impressive variety in the vocals of Will Ramos who seems to switch from low growls to harsh squeals and everything in between!
However, the sound quality doesn’t quite do the band justice tonight… I find that the album recordings are a complicated mix of heavy riffs, powerful synths, blast beats and breakdowns that sound like a smorgasbord of different metal genres blended together in a way that you can still distinguish the piece parts. However, from where I’m standing it sounds like a pretty chaotic mix where the synths and vocals drown out some of the more nuanced aspects of the music! It won’t put me off giving them another go though, as I’ve heard their sets are generally pretty top notch so I think I’ve just been unlucky tonight, so we move on to While She Sleeps…
From the moment While She Sleeps hit the stage with ‘Sleeps Society’ there is a noticeable step change in both sound quality and crowd energy that shows that all the hard work and relentless touring is really paying off. This is followed by ‘Anti-Social’ where things really start to open up in the standing area as everyone gets stuck into it. This continues throughout the whole set, where there are frequent requests for the crowd to open up the pit, including one particular request to open up the pit for Loz’s mum – which is very much obeyed!
The light show has been pretty impressive for While She Sleeps as well with it being used to enhance the performance for sure. After seeing the band at both the Download Pilot and Bloodstock, I was half expecting Loz to appear on the top of some of the stage rigging, but it seems like he’s been grounded for tonight so instead makes do with diving into the crowd time and time again without missing a line! The set wraps up with the fantastic (and my favourite) ‘Silence Speaks’ and ‘Systematic’ before the band unfurl a banner to reveal that they’ll be headlining Ally Pally (Alexandra Palace, London) in 2023, which is a great achievement. I’m a little bit undecided as to whether Sleeps work better for me at an open air festival or in an arena, so I guess we’ll just need to check that show out as well.. You know, for science…
Anyway, on to the main event of the evening, the band who must have done the most acclimatisation to bounce from Byron Bay, Australia to the rather chilly Autumn evening in Manchester. It is, of course, time for Parkway Drive who are preceded by the mellow Johnny Cash cover of ‘Hurt’ before the arena goes completely dark. On the screen a crack appears that slowly grows into a chasm before a group of hooded figures emerge bearing flaming torches in a similar way to their 2019 Bloodstock headline performance.
Once the atmosphere is well and truly set, the band emerge dressed in black (with the exception of Winston who appears clad entirely in white) and launch into one of the new singles ‘Glitch’ and the crowd goes absolutely wild! The sound issues of Lorna Shore are a distant memory as the mix for Parkway Drive is pretty spot on as they launch into a solid run of all of the big hits – ‘Prey’, ‘Carrion’ and ‘Vice Grip’ are all blasted through in succession accompanied by plenty of fire and other pyro. That’s three of my personal favourite tracks back to back so I’m having an absolute whale of a time!
There’s a good mix of old and new tonight though, with another new track ‘Ground Zero’ making an appearance which is a beast of a track. The pyro during this song is so loud that the poor security guard near me looked like he was going to need a new pair of trousers. I’ve not seen someone jump so visibly for a while! One thing that certainly caught me by surprise though was the appearance of a string quartet who inexplicably make things even heavier for a few songs, including the foreboding ‘Cemetery Bloom’ – now I know this features strings on the album but I can’t say I expected to see this in the flesh. I’m glad I have done though as it’s a clear highlight of the night for me.
The regular set comes to end with one hell of bang and the massive ‘Bottom Feeder’ where it seems like the crew have saved up most of the pyro to launch all at once, there’s fire, sparks and fireworks all over the place before things go completely dark again. Once again, torchbearers herald the start of the encore as the band return for a couple more to round off the night with classics ‘Crushed’ and ‘Wild Eyes’ to end what has been a pretty great night here at the AO Arena.
So all in all, Parkway Drive and While She Sleeps were both fantastic tonight, and if you find yourself with a chance to catch them on the rest of this tour, then I strongly suggest that you do! Lorna Shore put in a hell of a performance but were just unfortunately let down by some poor mixing on the night, but don’t let this put you off checking them out too!