Parkway Drive - Viva the Underdogs

Name: Parkway Drive - Viva the Underdogs Review
Item: Viva the Underdogs
Author: Dork

An album that makes you feel like you’re in the middle of a swarming crowd on a hot Deutschland evening.

Words: Dork

Spotify Apple Music

Label: Epitaph

Released: 27th March 2020

Rating: ★★★★

How do you celebrate your fifteen years of slugging it through blood, sweat and tears as a band? Fighting your way to becoming festival headliners, and mainstays of a genre that can chew up and spit out even the hardiest of acts? You release a documentary so people know just what you’ve gone through, of course.

Accompanying the one-night cinema release of 'Viva The Underdogs' - the Parkway Drive story - comes a live album recorded at one of the largest open-air festivals in the world, Germany’s Wacken Festival. This shining stage of Parkway’s success so far is full to the brim of everything we’ve come to love about them, and more.

For starters, it’s got that special quality most live albums fail to have - it makes you feel like you’re in the middle of a swarming crowd on a hot Deutschland evening, and not sat in your bedroom having a listen.

Perhaps most importantly it highlights just why Parkway Drive are so beloved. The energy they exude; they’re the kind of band who sprung from the basement stages years ago but still have that attitude of relishing every opportunity with wide-eyes and beaming smiles pours from every second.

While the set itself is an explosive listen, the crowning moment and pure unadulterated joy comes from the three re-recordings of originals (‘The Void’, ‘Vicecut’ and ‘Shadowboxing’ feat German rapper Casper) tucked at the end. It’s this little present which pushes ‘Viva The Underdogs’ into a truly special package cementing the payoff of hard work, fun that can come with it and most importantly, why Parkway Drive should be protected at all costs.