Live Review: Parkway Drive, Polaris, Alpha Wolf

The queue outside Melbourne's Forum Theatre is long as old-school fans come out of mosh-retirement for the final show of Parkway Drive's A Decade Of Horizons anniversary tour.

Once settled inside, we take our positions as opening band Alpha Wolf take theirs on stage. Tearing the house down with their songs, frontman Aidan Holmes instructs those of us already in the building to "get back to the front!". The band's heavy breakdowns vibrate under our feet as band members head-bang in unison, which encourages us to do the same. We're now pumped for what's to come. 

Polaris leave us with little time to negotiate our next positions as they begin in an explosion of metal melodies. Frontman Jamie Hails bellows, "Melbourne! Let's get a fuckin' circle pit going. Right now! SPLIT! SPLIT! SPLIT!" as their opening song sends us wild. We're barely into their second song and our first crowd-surfer's riding the waves of our raised arms. Regress puts us in the middle of a stampede where hats, shoes and beer cans are thrown into the air. When closing their set, Polaris thank Parkway Drive for the mark they've made on their genre, leaving us to fare them well them with a round of applause. 

During the last intermission before Parkway Drive take the stage, we sing along with System Of A Down's infamous Chop Suey!, which blares through the venue's sound system as anticipation fills the room.

Opening with The Siren's Song, the much loved Byron Bay band are immediately greeted with our ecstatic response. Although most of us are straight into the quickly erupting pit, one punter quickly readies a shoey while another sucks his Furphy tinnie from a Vans sneaker. Parkway Drive are all smiles as frontman Winston McCall invites a keen fan up to the stage for Carrion while we continuously chant along throughout their performance of tracks from the album we celebrate tonight. Within the pit, we see a small variety of onesies (particularly impressive is the banana), hats, sunglasses and Hawaiian shirts. McCall jokes that lead guitarist Jeff Ling was given the option during childhood to choose a taller height or the ability to shred at guitar, adding that he obviously chose to shred as Ling opens up Breaking Point.

Thrown into the mix with other favourable tracks is 2015's Vice Grip, but all too soon their set is brought to a false close with Horizons. As our demanding cheers bring the band back out on stage, we hustle through the last of their outstanding performance, which finally closes with Bottom Feeder.