Watch: Parkway Drive - Crushed

The start of this week has been huge for heavy music fans, with Byron Bay mosh-lords Parkway Drive premiering powerful new track Crushed on triple J's Good Nights on Monday, along with an epic video to accompany it today. Crushed gives us our second taste of new album Ire, due for release September 25th, with intriguing, 80s metal-infused first single Vice Grip dropping back in June. Crushed sees Parkway again steering clear of tired metalcore conventions, with the guitar work and drumming taking on an almost industrial/nu-metal feel at times. Comparisons to Rage Against The Machine wouldn’t be too far from the mark either, with a funky verse riff coupling vocalist Winston McCall’s rap-style delivery and provocative lyricism. 

If we thought Parkway’s video for Vice Grip was rad (with the boys launching themselves out of a plane and skydiving into a desert), then they’ve definitely raised the bar for Crushed, performing in a giant cube while it’s viciously twisted and turned by enormous, gold-dusted gods for their own amusement. Frontman McCall revealed the inspiration for the intense lyrical themes conveyed through Crushed: “Lyrically this song deals with the concept of power and control that is the basis for modern society. We live in a time when the lives of the many are lived at the will of the few. We have let the balance of power slip so far that a godlike will is able to be imposed upon the masses with little to now way of breaking the cycle. Bleak, right?

“The video we created was aimed to reflect these facets. We can't break gravity, but we did our best to twist it, so we filmed it all in a room that was constantly rotating 360 degrees, which made for an awesome effect, but added a crazy amount of danger to the process.”

Make sure you check out Parkway Drive’s bone-crushing live show this September when they hit the road with Thy Art Is Murder, Memphis May Fire and The Word Alive for the Ire tour and keep an eye out for the album, dropping September 25:

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Header Imaage by: Robin Looy