Parkway Drive is celebrating 20 years as a band this year and is currently out on their “Monsters of Oz” tour, which included support from Make Them Suffer, Northlane, and The Amity Affliction! This “monster” of a tour made a stop at Five Point Amphitheater in Irvine, CA on October 6th! The “Monsters of Oz” Tour could have honestly been named something like “Thunder From Down Under” since all four bands on this bill actually came from Australia!
Up first was Make Them Suffer! Coming from Australia’s capital in Perth, Make Them Suffer is a five-piece that has grown through genres of deathcore, melodic death metal, and heavy metalcore. They opened their set with “Ghost of Me, which is their latest released single. They also played “Bones,” “Hallowed Heart,” and “Ether,” and there was a pretty good amount of energy flowing throughout the venue for them, especially during their final song, “Doomswitch.”
Northlane was next to hit the stage and their experimental and progressive approach to metalcore added a dynamic element to the lineup. Out of Sydney, New South Wales, Northlane put on a seven-song set featuring songs from their two most recent albums, Alien and Obsidian. Both of these albums won awards in Australia for the Best Independent Heavy Album or EP at The Australian Independent Record Awards.
The Amity Affliction out of Gympie, Queensland opened up their set with the crowd favorite “Death’s Hand” from the 2014 album, Let The Ocean Take Me. The Amity Affliction put out a record earlier this year, Not Without My Ghosts, so they weaved a couple of songs from it into the set. Their set also consisted of songs from five of their albums with most of the songs coming off Not Without My Ghosts.
Finally, it was time for Parkway Drive! This tour is extra special because though Parkway has done tours in the States before, this was the first time they had brought their full pyro production! The lights went dark and “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen started playing. The whole crowd was singing and jumping and after the song, the band walked on and went straight into “Glitch!”
Fire was coming from all directions already and it just made their set that much more massive!
Parkway played through several hits from across six of their albums, including their latest release, Reverence, and going all the way back to their early works off their Horizons LP. Before “Sleepwalker,” frontman Winston McCall noted that there were five different mosh pits going on. He said that for this next one, he wanted to see only one big one. I’ve heard bands say this before and the pit stays relatively the same but this one had to be one of the actual biggest pits I’ve ever seen. It basically took up the entire crowd which was insane.
During Covid times, I watched concert videos on YouTube religiously and found so many of my now favorite bands that way. Parkway was one of those bands that I watched and I was instantly in awe of their performance. At the time, I was new to seeing bands using Pyro so I was just blown away, especially when they played “Crushed.” It has been my dream for like three years now to see that live and Parkway sure didn’t disappoint. Leading into “Crushed,” drummer Ben Gordon did a drum solo, strapped into a chair while upside down! After his solo, the entire stage caught on fire as they went into “Crushed” and Ben continued to still spin throughout the whole song. It was such an unreal experience! Before they went into their next and final song, the band came out to the front of the stage and all stood in a line while throwing out picks and sticks as WInston spoke. With all members linking their arms, they led the crowd into a chant for the opening riff to “Wild Eyes” and it was such a powerful way to end the night.
The “Monster of Oz” tour has since concluded but hopefully we don’t have to wait a long time before the boys, and their pyro, are back in the States!
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