Atlas by Parkway Drive

Atlas, Parkway Drive's fourth studio album, came out through Resist and Epitaph on 26 October 2012, and it's the sound of the Byron Bay metalcore crew reaching past the pit for something grander. They decamped to Los Angeles to make it with producer Matt Hyde, and the extra room shows: the breakdowns still land like dropped anvils, but sweeping melodic passages and bigger, more cinematic arrangements now wrap around them.

Winston McCall still barks like a drill sergeant, Jeff Ling's guitar lines sometimes lean closer to power metal than hardcore, and Ben Gordon and Jia O'Connor, the bassist whose 2006 arrival locked in a line-up that has held ever since, keep the whole machine lurching forward. "Dark Days" and "Wild Eyes" are the anthems, the latter built around a chant made for a festival field. The J Awards shortlisted it for Australian Album of the Year.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.