Horizons

Strictly all-meat-no-filler metalcore, the second album by Australian outfit Parkway Drive is the sort of solidly efficient album that keeps terms like "solidly efficient" from sounding like faint praise. The five-piece led by singer Winston McCall, along with producer Adam Dutkiewicz (who between his ongoing tenure in Killswitch Engage and his side career as one of metalcore's most in-demand producers is turning into the style's equivalent of high-profile indie producer Chris Walla), keep the songs stripped down to bare essentials, right down to the largely under three-minute song lengths. Similarly, McCall's vocals avoid the more comical extremes of the traditional metalcore bark while maintaining a suitably aggressive presence, while the band's lockstep rhythm section (bassist Jia O'Connor and drummer Ben Gordon) and unison-riff specialist guitarists Jeff Ling and Luke Kilpatrick fire off each track with enough energy to compensate for the general sameness of approach. As a result, Horizons is strictly by the book metalcore, but delivered with enough talent and passion to put across a set of songs that might easily come off as samey and dull in less capable hands.