The hard-core scene is alive and well in Kansas City. Parkway Drive, an Australian mainstay in the metal-core/hard-core scene, recently came to town, bringing with them The Warriors, The Ghost Inside and Set Your Goals. All the bands cashed in on their Warped Tour hard-earned popularity by attracting what must have been about 500 fans to the Beaumont Club on Friday, Feb. 18.
This normally spacious venue felt crowded with fans packing in everywhere, the floor, the bar, and even the stage bristled with scores of people. I have never seen that many tattoos in my life. The recently renovated stage had plenty of depth for the bands to entertain the crowd and entertain they did-all the bands did an excellent job of using the stage.
Of the openers, The Warriors and The Ghost Inside both stuck to the de-tuned guitar riffs and growling vocals that made Parkway Drive famous. Both were excellent choices for opening bands, with the capacity crowd enjoying them both immensely. The Ghost Inside brought moments of musical intricacy to the evening, and mixed excellent softer songs into their otherwise aggressive set. The Warriors, true to their name, uplifted the energy of the crowd and fought for some respect with their hard-core punk.
All the bands hail from California, but of the three openers, Set Your Goals provided a different taste sound wise. Their mix of pop-punk and metal-core was well done, and would be well received opening for the like of A Day To Remember or Blink-182 but was clearly not to the taste of this crowd. Due to their popularity, Parkway Drive is undoubtably a hard band to open up for and Set Your Goals was not aggressive enough musically to please.
A sparse 10 minutes after the last chords from Set Your Goals faded away,, the headliner, Parkway Drive, took the stage. A true fit to the song name, the band opened up with “Samsara” from their newest album, Deep Blue. The audience soon built to a furor, and was singing, or rather screaming, along with every lyric. Egged on the lead singer/screamer Winston McCall, the band encouraged the audience to come up on stage and was met with an overwhelming response of stage diving, moshing fans. At one point a mob of sleeveless fans tore the microphone from McCall and proceeded to scream the lyrics and perform themselves. If they would have known how to play guitar, there would have been no band required at all.
Another notable point in the evening when a diminutive teenage girl was brought on stage to sing vocals on “Hollow.” Belying her size, she roared out the lyrics with animal ferocity one would only expect from a lion in heat. There was no low point in the set as the band kept the energy level at peak level for their whole hour set. While Parkway Drive did play a mix of old songs and new, the band primarily stuck to material from their newest album, Deep Blue, and all the songs sounded CD quality.
After a short hour, the band sounding significantly hoarser, retired, but after about five minutes of chanting reemerged to perform a pair of favorites, “Carrion” and “Five Months” from their sophithomore effort Horizons. The encore was a huge success and this crowd would have loved to keep moshing, screaming, and spilling every drink in the house if the band would only have continued to play.
