Killing With a Smile

For its original physical release, <i>Killing with A Smile</i>’s booklet folded out to visually explain the ambiguous cover art of a man slumped against a wall in the street. Four photographs later and it’s revealed that said man was shot by the overzealous partner of a woman who simply smiled at him. Hence the album’s title—but would its galloping mid-2000s metalcore break down the toxicity of unchecked possessiveness, or infuse its chugging riffs with rueful indignation? Parkway Drive’s debut 2005 record errs towards the latter, at its most transparent during the blaring upset of “Romance Is Dead”: “She said goodbye/So cry me a fucking river, bitch/You wouldn’t know love if it crushed your fucking chest.” Ever-darkening thoughts are entertained on “Picture Perfect, Pathetic” by vocalist Winston McCall: “I would so love to hang you/You’re like a shotgun, baby, pointed at my head/And those lips are suicide, but I just want to see you dead.” While <i>While Killing with a Smile</i>’s vantage point has arguably aged, the creative input of producer and Killswitch Engage guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz ensured that, musically, each track cuts the same homicidal grin of desperation and decimation that made the genre’s apex so compelling. In doing so, the far-reaching echoes of future Parkway Drive favourites were sounded. “It’s So Hard to Speak Without a Tongue” is the most notably prophetic, courting the same furious fragility that would fully come to fruition on legitimate classics like “Carrion” from 2007’s <i>Horizons</i>.