Parkway Drive enter studio

Australian hardcore heavyweights Parkway Drive has announced plans to return to the studio to record their third studio album, scheduled for a mid year release via Resist Records. The long-awaited follow-up to 2007’s breakout album Horizons was written in the band’s hometown of Byron Bay over the past six months and will be recorded in Los Angeles with celebrated producer Joe Barresi (Queens of the Stone Age, Bad Religion) over the coming weeks.

Determined to surpass previous efforts, Parkway Drive have gone all out in creating a complete listening experience. While maintaining the band’s trademark sound at its core, their forthcoming album will weave music, lyrics and artwork together into a dense concept that flows from beginning to end.

“Writing with a concept in mind has given us more direction,” explains Parkway Drive frontman Winston McCall. “Every song on this album was created with a definite purpose, as opposed to just writing a riff and building on that.”

While McCall concedes the album’s basic narrative – the tale of a man lacking direction in life who goes looking for answers at the bottom of the sea – is “kind of bizarre,” he says the concept was flexible enough to open itself up to many far-reaching ideas.

“The ocean is where I find the most clarity,” says the former bodyboard champion. “To go to the beach and sink into the water, the sound cuts out and you can just forget about everything. So I guess the concept is about cutting out everything and focusing on what’s inside yourself.”

Parkway Drive’s achievements are unmatched in Australian heavy music circles. After two huge-selling albums, 2004’s Killing With A Smile and 2007’s Horizons (the latter achieving Top 6 ARIA chart success), last year’s Parkway Drive: The DVD was met with a typically rabid response. It debuted at #2 on the ARIA chart and achieved Platinum status within weeks. By year’s end it was Australia’s biggest selling local artist DVD and was crowned ‘Best Music DVD’ at the 2009 Rolling Stone Awards. Constant global touring has helped cement their reputation as one of the most dominant exponents of heavy hardcore in the world today.

Having recorded their first two albums with Adam Dutkiewicz (Killswitch Engage), the forthcoming album finds Parkway Drive turning to seasoned veteran Joe Barresi. Known for his work with big-league rock acts including Queens of the Stone Age, Bad Religion and Tool, Barresi will handle the recording and mix at his home studio, JHOC (Joe’s House of Compression) in Los Angeles, before renowned mastering engineer Brian Gardner (Avenged Sevenfold, Lamb of God, Nine Inch Nails) applies the finishing touches in Hollywood.

By that time Parkway Drive should be back on the road again. First stop is Europe and the UK throughout April and May, where they’ll play their largest headlining dates so far in that territory as well appearing at Groezrock Festival in Belgium, before they make their anticipated return to the US for the Vans Warped Tour.

Already top of the most hotly anticipated heavy releases of 2010, their forthcoming album promises to be a new and exciting chapter in the story of Australia’s most successful metal-hardcore band.

“This is the heaviest thing we’ve written, and at the same time the catchiest,” McCall warns. “And while we always want to keep the definitive Parkway Drive sound, there are a couple of things that will hopefully add another dimension to what we do.”