Hit Different - McCall on his reggae and punk root fusion
Punk music was "the gateway into the rest of my life" - McCall

Music journalists Mikey Cahill and Sosefina Fuamoli uncover the musical roots behind Parkway Drive's Winston McCall.
Winston McCall’s journey upwards in the music industry certainly wasn’t a regular one.
Now the vocalist of successful metal band Parkway Drive, McCall doesn’t have any early memories of punk rock or metal infiltrating his childhood music preferences. Instead, the likes of The Beatles and Bob Marley sound tracked his emerging love for music.
“The earliest memories I have are of music rather than anything visual,” McCall said on the bonus episode of Hit Different.
“I was basically brought up on Bob Marley, The Beatles and Pink Floyd, but my earliest memories are of my parents playing Bob Marley to me.”
“My dad had a massive awesome reggae collection and my favourite thing was pulling out the records and looking at the cover art.”
Although McCall was quick to realise he wasn’t “a massive reggae-head” as he grew older and found more genres, he is still able to acknowledge that “it’s a very difficult form of music to create quality reggae”. Yet McCall’s horizons were soon expanded when he discovered punk rock in his teen years.
“In the teen years is when I realised that music is more than just a video clip on Rage,” he said.
“Around the age of 12 or 13 punk rock hooked me in, I’d never heard adrenaline in music, it was literally like a punch in the face.”
“And you tie that into your first feelings of teenage angst and that was when it got me, it was the gateway into the rest of my life.”
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We covered it on Hit Different, a weekly podcast that puts music culture in context.
This stage of its life lay the foundations for McCall’s segue into the hard rock and metal genre, where Parkway Drive quickly became a popular Australian band in the industry. McCall is the first to admit his band is “driven by passion” and lacked the early musical nous that many other successful compositions held in the market. Instead, McCall and his band mates sought to make all Parkway Drive records products that match the live energy they unleash at their famous action-packed concerts.
“It’s unique, it’s this idea of keeping as much of the rough edges on it as possible, because the rough edges is when you realise it’s personal,” McCall said.
In the early 2000s McCall made the progression to punk rock fandom, yet it took more time to “understand the intricacies of the massive genre” that is metal music. The Parkway Drive front man didn’t realise what he wanted to be until he stumbled upon a festival set by German band Rammstein in 2017.
“The best metal show that I’ve ever seen was watching Rammstein, which was absolutely huge,” McCall said.
“It’s the wildest show you have ever fucking seen. We watched the German speaking band singing 99 per cent German to an English crowd.”
“It hit so hard, it was absolutely incredible because it took you through the whole gamut of emotions the entire time, the feast of visuals was absolutely incredible.”
Hear the full story on Hit Different, a free weekly podcast that puts music culture in context.