Live Review: Parkway Drive - AO Arena, Manchester
Support: The Amity Affliction, Thy Art Is Murder
6th October 2025
Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Tim Finch
Wow! Just wow!
Byron Bay’s finest bring the first wave of shows on their Twenty-Year Anniversary tour to an end with a third UK date and a stop off at the AO Arena in Manchester. After shows in London and Birmingham – and a weekend ravaged by Storm Amy – the whole operation is purring like a well-oiled machine and Parkway Drive deliver a show for the ages; they’ve been promising this all their career, and now, on this tour, Parkway drives a flag into the ground and proclaim themselves truly worthy of inheriting the crown.
But that’s still to come, as there’s the not-insignificant matter of the supporting cast. You don’t often see full arena bills with just Aussie bands, but Parkway have put their money where their mouth is and brought along friends from down-under.
It might be an early start for The Amity Affliction but the arena is respectably full for the Queensland metalcore act’s show. Incorporating post-hardcore and emo elements into their sound, longest-serving member, vocalist Joel Birch, leads his charges through a whistle-stop tour of the high points of the band’s considerable discography. The mid-career Pittsburgh gets things going, followed by the kicking percussion and layered vocals of Like Love. Drag the Lake comes in with tinkling keys and a full-on symphonic bombast, Death’s Head brings pumping fists and the first signs of circle pit formation, I See Dead People is driving and ominous, while It’s Hell Down Here starts pleasantly enough before turning nasty quite quickly. Which just leaves Soak Me in Bleach to attract the evening’s initial crowd surfers and one huge beatdown. What a way to start the show.
It’s a State of Origin match up with New South Wales Deathcore bruisers Thy Art Is Murder following on, arriving by way of the Vengabus, and brining a far more abrasive assault to the small stage space. Tyler Miller replaced long-term vocalist Chris McMahon a couple of years ago, in time to appear on some versions of the band’s Godlike album.
Not unusual that record finds favour in tonight’s show, with the opener Blood Throne being an unwavering statement from the band. Tyler calls for multi circle pits to form around the vast floor space, the stage washed in harsh red lighting for Death Squad Anthem, horns are raised aloft for a punishing Join Me in Armageddon, Salves Beyond Death is basically feral, especially in the bestial breakdown. There’s no reprieve during Holy War or The Purest Strain of Hate, though the former contains some spacey guitar work to bamboozle and bemuse in equal measure. The arena floor is carnage and mayhem for the newer Keres, leaving the stomping finale of Puppet Master to finish the set. It seems as they they’ve only just started when they announce they’re leaving. Sign of a good show.
It’s wall to wall AOR classics as the crew start readying the stage for what is anticipated to be one hell of a show. The Too-Cool-for-School brigade can be seen singing along to Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’, Heaven by Bryan Adams and the sound guy even gives the arena the change to sing Livin’ on a Prayer without the backing tape. Bohemian Rhapsody is interrupted mid-flow by the solid sounds of AC/DC’s Back in Black and the video screens cycling through footage of Parkway, stemming back from the earliest days.
Then, the room goes dark, and the band appear. Not on stage but at the back of the arena, walking though the crowd on an elongated ring-walk, led by a flag-bearer, this is theatre at it’s most audacious, with Parkway Drive confirming they may be the ones on the stage, but they’re still the same as everyone else at the show.
There is a smaller stage situated around twenty feet from the main platform, and the band make for that, a drum kit rises from its centre and the show begins. Carrion starts with energy high, Prey has the whole place up and jumping and ends with a bridge being lowered from the ceiling, allowing the band to cross to the now revealed main stage.
Looking like the derelict space beneath a bridge, its strength is in its simplicity. Glitch comes with the first look at the band’s dancers, acting out a scenario inspired by a George Miller storyline, the stage spewing flames the heat from which can be felt in the seats.
The walkway and the smaller stage are used throughout the show, and it’s from here that Winston bids all to wave at his mum, who’s sitting not far from where I am. Vice Grip is rapturously received, as is the “heavy as fuck” fan favourites from yesteryear, Boneyards and Horizons, the latter of which comes with an extended outro and pyrotechnics.
Winston’s having more changes of clothing than Mariah tonight, and he’s in a black robe, surrounded by spirits and a spiked microphone stand for a haunting Cemetery Bloom. A rambunctious The Void sees perpetual movement front to back and side to side and – in one of the most redundant pieces of stagecraft ever seen in Manchester – Winston sings Wishing Wells beneath a rain machine. On any given day in this town he would have been able to pop outside and get the real thing.
All baring drummer Ben Gordon take to the small stage for a ten-minute run through of the Killing With a Smile debut’s heaviest moments. It’s an old-school fan’s idea of heaven as Parkway fire through the likes of Gimme a D, Anasasis (Xenophontis), Mutiny, It’s Hard to Speak Without a Tongue, Smoke ‘Em If Ya Got ‘Em, and Romance is Dead. It’s a seamless creation, stitched together like a bunch of mad scientists and called by Winson “Some Satan’s Hollow shit” in honour of the small venue where they played their first Mancunian shows.
Dark Days ends with Winston exiting stage left, only to appear in the middle of the crowd, where he becomes the fulcrum for one of the Arena’s biggest pits. A young lady who fell joins him on the platform and does not appear to want to let go. Idols and Anchors concludes with him being passed over the heads of the crowd back to the smaller stage.
A string trio descend and plays an extended instrumental section in Chronos, stay around for Darker Still but have left by the time Bottom Feeder rages itself from the speakers.
It’s been exhausting stuff just to watch, but it’s not over yet as Parkway start their encore with a drum solo, though not your run-of-the-mill drum solo - oh no, this includes revolving drum kits and flames - lots of flames. Crushed comes along like a pyromaniac’s dream with fire roaring from everywhere a flame can spit from, for as epic a finale as I’ve ever witnessed.
It ends like it began, on the smaller stage and the band playing the Atlas record’s fan favourite, Wild Eyes, ushered in by the audience singing of the central refrain.
That Parkway Drive have been able to largely remain together since their 2003 inception, with only mild alterations around bass players before settling on Jia O’Connor in 2006, may go long way to explain the tightness of the band. There is clearly an agreed evolution, moving them from the initial Metalcore sound of their first records, to the more refined approach of their later works, without sacrificing their integrity.
The show was an amazing combination of sound and visuals, made all the more admirable by the fact that the crew can pull it all down and rebuild it again in another arena within twenty-four hours. We’d asked who the next big bands are? Who will take the place of the Sabbaths, Maidens and DCs going into the future. I’d say, on strength of this, Parkway Drive is a dead cert.
Photo Credits: Tim Finch Photography
