Vote for the best Iron Maiden song ever.“You think, ‘Fucking hell, this is serious,’” says Winston. Halfway through, Tom was forced to drop out to go and have treatment. In January 2016, Parkway Drive toured Europe with Architects in support. They carried on playing, pouring their frustration and confusion into their shows. “It was the same thing: we do what we have to do, as a band.” Once again they dealt with it the only way they knew how: by throwing themselves into their work. Winston won’t disclose which band member it was, or the name of their partner, to protect their privacy, but it hit the whole band hard. He pauses for several seconds to collect himself. Winston’s voice audibly cracks with emotion as he relates this. But at the end of their American tour, the band received more devastating news: one of their partners was diagnosed with cancer. Stunned but hopeful, Parkway got on with the duties of promoting Ire. “But there’s a constant thing of, ‘That’s fine, he’ll get past it.’” “We’re like, ‘What the fuck?’” says Winston. It was then that Architects guitarist Tom Searle told them that he was battling cancer. Not long after, they played a show with Architects – a band the Australians had been close to since supporting them almost a decade earlier. The band released Vice Grip as the first track from Ire in June 2015. And anyway, they didn’t give a damn what other people thought. But they were buoyed by the sort of confidence a decade-long upwards trajectory gives a band. It was a deviation from the metalcore blueprint they’d followed since their inception in Byron Bay in 2003, and they knew not everyone would come along for the ride. In the summer of 2015, Parkway Drive were ready to unveil Ire on an unsuspecting world. It’s an appropriate choice given the circumstances that surrounded the making of the album, and one that isn’t coincidental. Reverence begins with the sound of cawing crows, traditionally the harbinger of death. “It’s going to be hard, but I knew it was coming,” he says of opening up about what the band have been through. He pauses frequently to collect his thoughts. There are times when it’s clearly tough for him. Over the next 90 minutes, Winston will explain just what the band have been through together, and how it shaped Reverence. And, given everything Parkway have been through, there’s a lot of intensity to burn off. The band are back at the Underworld tomorrow night for a low-key show, though ‘low-key’ applies to the size of the venue and the lack of pyrotechnics up onstage rather than the intensity in the room. His abiding memory of the gig is of a crowdsurfer kicking an air conditioning unit off the ceiling. Parkway last played this venue in May 2008, six months after they released their second album, Horizons. Given the amount of shivering he’s doing, it’s not working. Winston is wrapped up in standard-issue Antipodean armour to keep out the cold British winter weather: gloves, scarf, woolly hat. It’s early evening and we’re sitting in London’s Camden Underworld.
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