Isle Of Wight punks Grade 2 wrestle with a whirlwind coming-of-age on rollercoaster fourth album Talk About it… Grief. Growth. Grafting every step of the way. Twelve years since they first cranked amps as schoolkids rattling their music room out on the Isle of Wight, Grade 2 have plenty to talk about. From seeing dreams dangling precariously during COVID to blasting back with 2023’s self-titled third LP, frontman Sid Ryan, guitarist Jack Chatfield and drummer Jacob Hull looked to have claimed their place on top of the world. But storming festivals like Rock am Ring and rubbing shoulders with heroes like Rancid and Guns N’ Roses was only half the story. Offstage, the trio were dealing with the quiet dissonance of island life back at their parents’ places, finding time for romantic relationships and plotting the path for-ward through a world increasingly going to shit. Rollercoaster fourth album Talk About It is a chronicle of every tribulation and triumph. “The title-track was initially called Communication, a song about how men don’t talk about the things that really matter to them,” explains Sid. “But it became Talk About It, which sums up the whole album, touching on every emotion that you feel while being in a band, from love to loss to personal turmoil to ambition. It’s a coming-of-age story about Grade 2 entering adulthood...” From dealing with a dog-eat-dog music industry on Cut Throat and learning to live life at 100mph with Crash And Burn to confronting political toxicity on Rotten, paying tribute to their waterlocked home with Smugglers Haven and processing the pain of loss heartfelt closer Otherside, it’s a wild ride. And a compelling first step on the next chapter from one of modern punk’s brightest lights. “This is everything we’ve been through,” Sid smiles, bittersweetly, “but we’re still here!”
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.