In April, back in Sweden, we bought tickets to a concert that would take place at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre five months later. We were looking forward to this night for so long and it finally arrived.

The doors opened at 4:30 pm already and it said in the email we received a few days previously to arrive early to ensure a parking spot. 1 pm was a bit too early so we drove out to the ocean, Shorncliffe, where we had lunch at Matthew Thomas instead. There was a big pier where lots of people were fishing. The beach was not so impressive though, but Brisbane is not famous for its beaches. Not like Gold Coast. The Entertainment Centre was a bit north of Brisbane CBD with plenty of parking. Leaving after the event, even with thousands of people, was not a problem at all. Pros of having such an arena a bit outside of the city compared to in the middle of CBD where everyone would go on the public transit system and completely clog it.

Parkway Drive didn’t enter the stage until 9 pm, so there were three other bands warming up before: Void Vision, The Ghost Inside, and I Prevail. Haven’t listened to them, but they set the mood.

Parkway entered the stage from the back and walked through the crowd, they really engaged with the audience!

The stage had three parts: in the middle of the crowd, the main one, and the bridge that went up and down every now and then. They started in the middle, playing together on the very small platform and after their first song, they dropped the screen and revealed the massive stage behind. Show-wise, it was incredible! They jumped around, changed clothes, interacted with the crowd and seemed to really have a great time. There were so many special effects. Lots of fire, even falling water, rotating drummer wheel, their logo on fire. Oh yes, did I mention that they had a bunch of pyrotechnics?

I have to admit that I only started listening to them when I met Mikael and he introduced me to them five years ago so I mostly only listened to their last two albums and probably could have had goosebumps at more occasions then just with the new songs. For example, they did a long medley of all their heavy songs from their first album. Pretty impressive but nothing I recognized unfortunately.

Another really interesting thing about this concert was the people attending it. Mostly, they were around our age. But we also so really old people. And really young! The girl in front of us was probably around 10-12. But several rows before us, there was this tiny curly haired girl, probably not more than 4. Completely digging it, fist bumping and doing the 🤘 signs with her tiny hands from the lap of her father. How cute isn’t that?

This was the small middle stage where they played Prey early on.

The main stage with steel beams. Not sure what the setting was supposed to be like. But I got the impression that it was supposed to be a dystopian future.

This guy, Jeff Ling, really made this whole evening and experience more real. Since we met him in Byron Bay on the Community Market a month and a half ago, seeing him with his two young ones and he was just so down to earth and friendly. Having met him and seeing him on stage, doing his epic thing was just so amazing! It made the whole thing real, yet at the same time not.

During one song, Winston just popped up in the middle of the crowd.

And he picked up a young boy on his shoulders and did the song like that while encouraging everyone around them to run in a circle. That kid must have had the best night of his life!