Review: Parkway Drive at Metro City
Parkway Drive at Metro City
w/ Blush, Oceans & Omens
Saturday, August 1, 2026
Few Australian heavy bands have reached the heights of Parkway Drive. From humble beachside Byron Bay beginnings to sold-out arenas and festival headline slots around the world, the five-piece have become one of the country’s biggest heavy music success stories.
The Killing Horizons tour celebrates two of the band’s defining records across back-to-back nights, Killing With A Smile in full on night one before returning the following evening for Horizons.
With Perth opening the tour, anticipation was already building long before the doors to Metro City opened. When they finally did, hundreds poured inside, racing for the barricade before Parkway Drive took the stage to perform Killing With A Smile in full.
Oceans & Omens kicked things off with their raw, old-school metalcore sound that had all the ingredients to fire up a Parkway Drive crowd, but it took both the band and the audience a few songs to find their feet. Vocalist Sean O’Brien never stopped working the room, encouraging people to move and get the pit going, and by the third track, fans were finally responding.
Before launching into their last song, O’Brien asked the room to sit with him on the floor as he made his way from the stage into the audience. The crowd obliged, and as the song intensified, everyone leapt back to their feet, swirling around the vocalist in the first real display of the energy that would define the rest of the night.
Blush took the stage next and wasted no time making an impression. A stark contrast to the bands either side of them on the bill, the local four-piece emerged beneath red and blue strobes, their groove-driven sound immediately drawing one of the biggest responses of the night outside of the headliners.
They moved the way they sounded: fluid, flowing, and completely in sync with one another, with their chemistry making it hard to believe they were still an emerging act.
Frontwoman Skye Sam’s vocals were mesmerising, drifting between almost ethereal melodies and choruses that carried an unmistakable rawness. While the band’s 90s grunge influences were clear, Blush never felt derivative, instead carving out an identity that was entirely their own.
With a confidence and musical maturity well beyond their years, they looked every bit like a band destined for much bigger stages.
The stage began to transform; a black sheet was removed from a drum kit, which sat beneath the towering Killing With A Smile banner that had watched over the crowd all night. Before the lights had even dropped, chants of “Parkway Drive” thundered through Metro City, rolling from the floor to the balconies until they became almost deafening.
The first note of Gimme a D sent the room into absolute chaos. The crowd surged forward with such force that the front barricade snapped inwards, leaving security guards bracing the metal with their boots as a constant stream of crowdsurfers poured over the front for the entire set. Perth fans showed no signs of slowing down, and neither did Parkway Drive.
Frontman Winston McCall barely stopped smiling as he looked out across the room. Spotting one fan crowd surfing in a wheelchair, McCall made his way over to high-five him before taking in the relentless energy pouring back from the crowd. “Look after yourselves, alright?” he laughed. “You’re very energetic.”
While Killing With A Smile remained at the heart of the night, McCall promised fans “a collection of bangers”, explaining there would be “some for the pit, some of them are sing-alongs” because “all we’re aiming for is the best vibes possible.”
The Perth crowd embraced that sentiment wholeheartedly, turning Metro City into exactly the atmosphere McCall had hoped for. There were circle pits, bodies flying overhead, and deafening gang vocals that McCall joked had become all too rare in modern heavy music.
“You’re the first to ever hear this one,” McCall told the crowd before launching into the only song from the album that had never been performed live, Blackout.
As Parkway Drive tore through their 2005 album, it quickly became apparent that the songs belonged as much to the crowd as they did to the band. McCall made that literal when he launched himself into the audience, disappearing into a sea of hands as laughing fans refused to let him go. “Down, down! Put me down! Down, boy!” he joked before crouching amongst the crowd and urging the entire room to join him. As the song exploded back to life, thousands leapt to their feet in unison before McCall crowdsurfed his way back to the stage, grinning, “I’ve always wondered what that was like.”
More than two decades on, there was no sense that Parkway Drive was simply revisiting an old record for nostalgia’s sake. Every lyric was screamed back with the same conviction as if it had only been released yesterday, a testament to the lasting impact the album continues to have on generations of fans.
As the final notes of A Cold Day in Hell rang out, there was little time to catch a breath, and McCall’s promise of “a few more treats” quickly came to life.
The band launched into a run of career-spanning favourites, from the soaring Prey and Sleepwalker to the emotionally charged Dedicated. Carrion brought the main set to a fitting close. As the lights dimmed and Parkway Drive disappeared backstage, a deafening chorus of “one more song” began echoing from the floor to the upper balconies.
The band returned to the stage as McCall laughed, “One? Only one? Two?” The crowd answered with another deafening roar before Bottom Feeder kicked the encore into gear. As Wild Eyes drew the night to a close, the room transformed into one enormous choir. Every arm was in the air, every lyric echoed back with unwavering conviction, and, for one final moment, it felt impossible to tell where Parkway Drive ended and the crowd began.
If this tour was intended as a celebration of Killing With A Smile, opening night proved the celebration belonged just as much to the thousands of voices inside as it did to Parkway Drive.
TAHNEE GRAHAM
Photos by Mikaela James
