late night drive home have never known a world without internet — without access to the endless stream of joy, sorrow, and titillation that we all tune in and tune out to on the daily. In many ways, the guys can’t extricate themselves from that reality, but they’re trying to grapple with it. The culmination of that, then, is the buoyant yet ominous as I watch my life online, the band’s debut album on Epitaph. “The record is a critique and a meta representation of the current online landscape: a whole new world or giant united country that connects us between cities, forcing us to be online. Instant gratification is at our fingertips — likes, follows, and entertainment a click away,” says guitarist Juan “Ockz” Vargas. “It shows the listener how we grew up in the early days of peak internet — how we saw it all unfold. We want to give our perspective on the internet while creating art alongside it.” late night drive home was born in El Paso, Texas, and Chaparral, New Mexico, hardworking communities where the collars were mostly blue — a quality that the band would bring to their music as self-taught craftsmen. Comprising guitarist Juan “Ockz” Vargas, singer Andre Portillo, drummer Brian Dolan, and bassist Freddy Baca, the entirely self-taught quartet released their first EP as a full band, 2021’s Am I sinking or Am I swimming?, and blew up with the single “Stress Relief,” a blast of early-Aughts indie that racked in tens of millions of streams. Their first pull compilation of songs, How Are We Feeling? dropped in 2022, and after signing with Epitaph in 2023 — and releasing 2024’s grunge-inspired EP I'll remember you for the same feeling you gave me as i slept — they found themselves playing stages their indie idols previously shredded: Coachella, Shaky Knees, Austin City Limits, and Kilby Block Party. Since the end of the pandemic, though, the band has been dreaming up as I watch my life online. “Sonically the record is expertly produced — it was the first work we put out that was recorded in professional studios and not our bedrooms,” Vargas says about working with producer Sonny Diperri. “Topically, the album is about the internet. As a Gen-Z band, we want to give an accurate representation of how it feels to be always online. Our generation is forced to care so much about its online identity, it’s like ‘your profile is as important as your outfit.’” The resulting suite of tracks is a series of online vignettes that hammers home the band’s message: the photos on your phone shouldn’t be your identity; your posts aren’t your inner monologue.
Formed in Byron Bay in 2003, Parkway Drive have released seven full-length studio albums, all on Epitaph: Killing with a Smile (2005), Horizons (2007), Deep Blue(2010), Atlas (2012), IRE (2015), Reverence (2018) & Darker Still (2022). Darker Still entered the official German & Swiss album charts at #5, Austrian at#7, Belgian at #11, United Kingdom at #2 (Rock & Metal Chart) & US at#4 (Current Hard Rock Music Album Chart). In their home country Australia, the band had their 3rd consecutive #1 album on the ARIA chart and won 2023 ARIA Award for Best Hard Rock / Heavy Metal Album for Darker Still. Darker Still, frontman Winston McCall says, is the vision he and his bandmates – guitarists Jeff Ling and Luke Kilpatrick, bassist Jia O'Connor and drummer Ben Gordon - have held in their mind's eye since a misfit group of friends first convened in their parents' basements and backyards in 2003. 2023 marked the 20 year anniversary of Parkway Drive, and the journey to reach this moment has seen Parkway evolve from metal underdogs to festival-headlining behemoth, 7 critically and commercially acclaimed studio albums (six of which achieving Gold status in their home nation), three documentaries, one live album, and many, many thousands of shows. To understand that growth is to understand Darker Still, both musically and thematically. Those who thought they had Parkway Drive figured out — the unrivalled energy, the high-octane breakdowns, McCall's trademark bark — need reconsider everything they know about Australia's masters of heavy. Darker Still stands as the culmination of a transformative time that has seen Parkway reach new heights of creativity and success by eschewing the restrictive, safe conventions of genre and abandoning their own self-imposed rules in favor of a wide-eyed appreciation of bold new horizons. This is the Parkway Drive the band have been striving to be for two decades. Emerging from the darkness of the past few years, this is the true face of Parkway — redefined and resolute, focused in mind and defiant in spirit.