Under The Influence #51: Mark My Way on “Killing With A Smile” by Parkway Drive!

Following the success of their debut EP “Don’t Close Your Eyes” in 2014, Byron Bay Metalcore quintet Parkway Drive left Australia and headed to Zing Studios in Westfield Massachusetts to record their debut full length with Killswitch Engage guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz. All the tracks were written and rehearsed so the recording took just two weeks and marked the only album in the bands career to feature  bassist Shaun Cash who exited the group a year later. Unlike a lot of Metalcore bands of the time, they didn’t include any clean singing on their material at that time and paved the way for Australian bands to work with high calibre producers from overseas, something as rare as rocking horse s*** at the time.

This is a hard one for us to filter out, since our sound has both hardcore and metal influences. Anyhow, Parkway Drive, in particular their debut album “Killing with a smile”, has meant a great deal for us as a band. Without this release, we would have had other decisive influences and would probably have sounded pretty differently. Of course, being young, we all wanted to expand our horizons. Together with bands like Slipknot, E-town Concrete and big H8000-bands, Parkway Drive inspired us mainly in the early days. ‘Gimme AD’ and ‘Romance is dead’ for example still find their way into our playlists. For a while, we’ve even included a cover for “Smoke ‘Em If Ya Got ‘Em” in our set list. Getting older, we grow musically and notice other great bands like Behemoth and Lamb of God making their way into our writing inspiration too. In any case, this would not have been possible without the first foundation being laid by Parkway Drive. Killing with a smile made us develop our musical taste and capabilities, from where our story departed. In Conclusion, with respect to the roots, this one never gets old!

Thin The Herd” by Mark My Way is out now!

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