Killing with a Smile (CD - 2006)

Personnel: Winston McCall (vocals); Luke Kilpatrick, Jeff Ling (guitar); Ben Gordon (drums).

Audio Mixer: Adam Dutkiewicz.

Recording information: Zing Studios, Westfield, MA (05/2005).

Photographer: Jerad Knudsen.

Like their peers I Killed the Prom Queen, Australia's Parkway Drive have read up on the metalcore handbook as written by popular American bands like Killswitch Engage and As I Lay Dying. Their debut, Killing with a Smile, is all about punishing breakdowns, death metal riffing, hardcore aggression, and monstrous growls that want nothing more than to spit and snarl until listeners entirely understand just how pissed off they really are and, well, that they're not joking. Outside of a rough and venomous exterior (and incessant use of murderous and bloody imagery), Parkway Drive prove to really be just a bunch of tough Aussies with broken hearts. Of course, though, this means malicious and infuriated revenge directed at the young maidens who have tossed them aside. Consequently, lyrical treasures abound on the album: vocalist Winston McCall compassionately declares, "Cry me a f*cking river bitch/You wouldn't know love if it crushed your f*cking chest" in the fittingly titled "Romance Is Dead" before announcing several songs later that "If looks could kill you'd be a f*cking shotgun against my head...I would so love to hang you." So really, Parkway Drive just want to be loved. Fans of acts like Bleeding Through or any of the aforementioned handbook writers could get a lot of satisfaction out of this release; it just depends on where personal opinions currently stand on the necessity of another metalcore act. ~ Corey Apar minimize