Parkway Drive’s Winston McCall Talks New Music: ‘We’re Writing Every Day’

A larger release from Parkway Drive could arrive sooner than fans might expect.

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone AU/NZ, frontman Winston McCall said the Aussie band are still deep in writing mode, following the release of “Sacred” earlier this year.

“We are actually doing stuff. You know how normally I’m like, ‘Nah, I can’t really tell you what’s going on’… We’ve at least dropped ‘Sacred’, so people are like, ‘Oh, they’re doing things’. I’m stoked with that,” he said.

“Sacred” has exploded across streaming platforms, with McCall calling it the stronger reception to a single in their career: “Like, that was literally like the best release of a song we’ve ever had, which is nuts. The metrics on that thing. It’s really crazy to drop a song and people go, ‘It’s the best one’. Everyone’s listening to it.”

Not content with sticking to the old three-year album cycle, he said the band is so deep into writing, they have even set up a studio in the back of their tour bus: “We’re writing every day. It’s really, really fun.

“‘Sacred’ came about from us going, we want to do music and we want to put it out there in the fastest way possible, so you don’t have to wait 3 years and have all of this stuff wrapped in a whole big thing. And then we go, ‘Here it is, all of it at once’,” he explained. “We’re just like, ‘No, we’ve got a thing, we’re gonna record it, boom, there it is’. So, we’re still operating on that, doing, like, we have a bunch of things on the boil in terms of different songs and stuff.

“We might have something out before the end of the year, we might not, but I don’t know, we’re working on stuff that we’re really pumped on,” McCall teased.

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Parkway Drive is also still reeling from their highly successful Sydney Opera House show in June, where they delivered a full black-tie, symphonic-metal spectacle that’s now being turned into a feature-length concert film and live album.

Plus, the band’s 2022 album Darker Still, came in at ninth on Rolling Stone AU/NZ’s 100 Best Australian Albums of the 2020s So Far, which was released last week. The album helped cement the band as not only Australia’s biggest metalcore act, but also one of the country’s biggest bands, period.

While Parkway Drive’s 2026 touring plans aren’t immediately clear, they have been announced to headline Australia’s first heavy metal cruise. Plus, they will headline their Park Waves festival, with its Australian debut also set for the new year.

McCall isn’t exactly hiding the band’s ambitions — he’s already got stadiums in his sights. He told Rolling Stone AU/NZ that their next live show will be “fucking mental”, and taking it to stadiums is “the only level left”. In fact, he shared that the conversation happened even before last year’s arena tour.

“The concept of Parkway being a stadium after you’ve seen what we can do in an arena, surely you want to see what we’re gonna do with that. I want to see what we’re gonna do with that, knowing the shit that I am up for!” he said.

“I know that when it happens, because it is a when, it’s gonna be fucking mental.

“I know the metrics of what it takes to be a band that goes into [stadiums] and makes it work successfully. It‘s different from being an arena band, and it takes massive risk, and it takes imagination, and it takes guts to fucking do. But I wanna do it.”