Concert Review of Parkway Drive, Architects, Thy Art is Murder in Munich by Alex Bock

Parkway Drive, Architects, Thy Art Is Murder
Zenith, Munich, Jan. 23^rd, 2016

So Parkway Drive payed Munich a visit last weekend. It was the 2^nd date on their tour through Germany promoting their latest record ‘Ire’. They brought two bands along.

The opener of the show was Thy Art Is Murder from Sydney, Australia. Their vocalist CJ McMahon left the band only a few weeks ago. He is replaced by Nick Arthur (Molotov Solution) for now. Searching through the web, there’s already talk about a new vocalist, but nothing is officially confirmed yet. Compared to the other two bands, they were the heaviest that night.

Second band that night were Architects from the UK. Almost throughout the whole set the stage was drenched in blue light, sometimes there were stroboscope’s added to that. Light wise a bit of a dark set, for the camera as much as for the audience. Didn’t take long for Sam Carter to get the crowd going, encouraging circle pits and the infamous wall of death. Architects, that played a successful headliner tour in winter last year, surely contributed to the number of people being at the show. Set list included ‘Gravedigger’, ‘Naysayer’, ‘The Devil Is Near’ and ‘C.A.N.C.E.R.’.

Headliners of the evening were Parkway Drive. They started their set with the song ‘Destroyer’. First you heard the intro and saw the silhouettes of the band members, when finally a curtain with the ‘Ire’ logo came down and papercut canons were shot. A pretty impressive start. A few songs into the set there were even flames blown upwards. The crowd in the front was insane. Constant crowd-surfing. The moment they touched the ground in the pit, people ran back and were on the audience’s hands once again to crowd-surf to the front and so on. The audience was divided into a front area, where only a certain amount of people was allowed. Before the whole show started they handed out tickets for that space. For the first two bands they didn’t let that many people in there. Shortly before Parkway Drive started, they opened the barrier for a few more. So the front rows were pretty busy. Looking at people’s faces they were really happy too. The venue wasn’t fully packed, but with a capacity of about 5.5k that means there were still a few thousand people attending the show. From further behind the light show was still impressive, but the vibe wasn’t as good as up front. The closer you walked to the front area the hotter the air got and the more the people went crazy to the music. Here’s some pictures of the night and the set-list: