The Den was a big shed with a concrete floor and an enormous PA system. It was where I saw my first hardcore gig on 7 October 2006. I was 18 and a contender for gangliest nerd in Sydney.
On the wall behind the bands, someone had hung a huge banner: “YOU ARE THE FUTURE.” I Killed The Prom Queen headlined. They sucked (see for yourself here), but I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. “You are the future.” I was there with the gronky black-haired kids with sleeveless band shirts and huge munters in Hurley gear and, fuck me, I believed it. Some parents stood up the back, covering their faces.
The year before, Parkway Drive had released their first album, Killing With A Smile. It went into my CD player as soon as I bought it and rarely came out. Parkway were like nothing else in the still-nascent Aussie metalcore scene: five surfers from Byron Bay who didn’t bother with complex guitar noodling, metal attitude, costumes (unless you count thongs and boardies) or grandiose solos.
There were no emo “clean” vox either – just huge guitars, Winston McCall’s guttural screaming, mammoth breakdowns, stage-dives and circle pits, guys and girls jumping and pushing and screaming.
Parkway is metal for punk kids, straight out of Australia’s hardcore punk mecca: Byron Bay High School. Its members were never that into metal, but came up at the same time as US metalcore giants Killswitch Engage and As I Lay Dying. They were influenced by bands like Unearth and In Flames, bands with whom they now share top billing.
At Sydney University’s Manning Bar in December 2006, we screamed our guts out when Winston stuck his mic into the crowd and we cheered when they played Gimme AD. Guys jumped from the speakers and the stage into the kids below, Michael Crafter walked out on everyone’s shoulders.
All the songs sounded the same and I just wanted to jump around.
Then in 2007, Parkway released Horizons. It was, in the language of metal reviewing, both more melodic and more brutal than ever. The shows got bigger. I went to Canberra for uni, dyed my hair black, grew a fringe and started wearing T-shirts with coffins on them. My mates and I kept going to the gigs, screaming “Carrion!” at the top of our lungs. The lyrics were emo as anything, but who cared?
In a moment I’m lost
Dying from the inside
Her eyes take me away
Tear me apart from the inside out.
This was shit to shout until your voice went, while giving boosts to crowdsurfers wearing Alexisonfire shirts, Acacia Strain shirts, Trivium shirts, Bury Your Dead shirts. With Carrion, Parkway had a true crowd-pleaser and had arrived. “CARRION!!!” and then a huge breath for the call back: “Dying from the inside.” That doesn’t even make sense, really, but when you think about it, neither did straightening your hair in the bathrooms between sets.
At one show, in the now-defunct Jamison Inn in Canberra, everyone screamed “CARRION!!!” while a guy jumped off the PA on a boogie board. By the end of the night we were all crammed onto the tiny pub stage, ears bursting from the kicks and getting those pointy ESP guitar necks in the ribs.
I loved the solidarity of it all, even if I was too awkward to talk to anyone except my friends. We’d come streaming out of the pit to knock back Bundy and Cokes between sets because we were 18 and we could; we’d shout: “So cry me a fucking river” with massive smiles on our faces before the breakdown in Romance is Dead; and we’d always head home alone because we were terrified of the scene girls with pink hair and heart-padlock tattoos on their collarbones.
At Soundwave in 2007, the rain belted down and we moshed to Carrion so hard that steam poured off the pit. The singer from the Bronx did his set crowdsurfing with a sombrero and a tin of VB. We never had problems at those shows like you do at the likes of Big Day Out. There were no idiots on pingers or festival creeps.
“CARRION!!!” We were screaming it at No Sleep Til Sydney, when I went with a mate who had just returned from Afghanistan on a tour; “CARRION!!!” at Woden basketball court; or at the UNSW Roundhouse, or in the car driving to the library to study, or in my first-year uni room screaming “CARRION!!!” while I was putting the iron over my fringe before tutes.
Parkway put out two more albums and even got a song in the Triple J hottest 100 in 2011 (at 97!). But Carrion is still the one they close with. Around the world thousands of teenagers are screaming “CARRION!!!” – in Sofia, in Sao Paolo, in Indianapolis, in Bucharest, Bogota and Minsk. In Tokyo, Barcelona, Athens.
I haven’t been to a Parkway gig in ages. I shaved off my black hair because the regrowth made me look like I was going bald. Then I started going bald for real. A laundry mishap destroyed most of my good band shirts. But every now and again I still like to put on Horizons and head back to 2007, when we were all shouting “CARRION!!!”
