Chris Hemsworth, Ed Sheeran and the Adelaide inspiration behind metal juggernaut Parkway Drive
Before they were starring on a Chris Hemsworth documentary with Ed Sheeran and selling out arenas across the world, one of Australia’s most successful exports found light in Adelaide.
Adelaide can take some credit for one of the biggest bands on the planet right now.
Chart-topping metal juggernaut Parkway Drive has been at the forefront of heavy music worldwide for more than a decade, earning top-billing at festivals home and abroad on the back of eight studio albums and millions of streams.
In the past 12 months alone, they’ve starred on Chris Hemsworth’s documentary with Ed Sheeran, sold out Australia’s biggest arenas and played a career-defining show at the Sydney Opera House.
But before they became one of Australia’s most successful exports, and genre-pushing innovators, the teenage underdogs from Byron Bay found light down south.
“Adelaide was a bit of a shining beacon in the Australian music scene when we started,” front man Winston McCall tells The Advertiser.
“Some of the biggest influences on this band when we started – I Killed the Prom Queen, Day of Contempt, Shot Point Blank – were all Adelaide bands.
“So the Adelaide show for us the first time we came, at (former live music venue) the Underground, was a big deal for us to play.
“We’ve gone through all of these venues over the years and the shows have always been amazing, it’s always been epic.
“The fact we got to do an arena (at the Entertainment Centre last September) is nuts.”
Given the band’s global headliner status, you’d forgive McCall for forgetting his roots for a moment.
But he never has.
Remembering them is at the core of what Parkway Drive is about.
The group – currently captivating Europe with its 20-year anniversary tour – had as much fun watching themselves on Hemsworth’s Limitless series as millions around the world did.
Drummer Ben Gordon, a long-time friend of the Thor megastar, had two months to teach Hemsworth how to play the drums to Sheeran’s hit Thinking Out Loud.
“The whole concept of the entire thing was a full-on, what-the-hell kind of moment,” McCall, 43, says.
“This is bonkers, there’s so much Parkway branding in this thing, it’s insane.
“I’m just like ‘how is this Parkway and Chris Hemsworth and Ed Sheeran, and that’s a product’… it’s nuts.”
The relatable, down-to-earth mantra is the foundation of what Park Waves Festival is about, too.
The ARIA-winning five-piece could pick their festival to headline tomorrow, but, instead, they are running their own this summer – for the fans.
And for the fellow underdog, in a sense.
The ‘rolling heavy metal travelling circus’ will make 11 stops across the country, visiting regional locations through February and March, in an ambitious undertaking during a time of music festival uncertainty in Australia.
“We come from a region ourselves, a non-capital city, we’re used to getting skipped, and we’ve always cared about that,” McCall says.
“But all of a sudden, the idea of doing a tour of any kind started meaning selling out shows and people missing out on tickets.
“What happens if we go to one of these regional areas and play the biggest venue they got, even if it’s, like, a thousand people?
“A couple of thousand people are going to miss out, that sucks… and we don’t have the time to play three or four nights to make it work.
“So the idea of it just becoming its own festival and its own travelling circus was kind of born from that, and the idea of just giving that access.”
Joining them will be fellow Australian heavyweights The Amity Affliction, Northlane and Alpha Wolf, as well as US post-hardcore icons Story of the Year.
“If you think of the idea of Mad Max but as a music event, this is it,” a proud McCall explains.
“It’s a live-action movie but at the same point in time, it’s also something that’s very personal.
“The thing that always attracted me to this kind of music, it breaks the barrier of that mould of rock stardom of the extravaganza of something massive like KISS or ACDC or something like that, where you’re like ‘they’re golden gods, they’re all the way up there and they’re something different to us’.
“It gives you something which can be mind-meltingly massive in its impact and visual intensity and sonic intensity.
“But it still has that breakthrough where you’re like, ‘I get that they’re just people, I get that this is people doing something that they care about, and they care about what I’m doing here as well’.”
Park Waves Festival rolls into the Adelaide Showgrounds on February 20, 2026.
