To find out more about the album, we sat down with frontman Jack Bergin, who also shared insights into his creative evolution and what fans can expect from their high-octane performances.

SR. Before I start this chat, I must say, you almost made me retire from going on mosh-pits, because the pit for you guys at Knotfest 2023 was probably one of the craziest I have ever been, especially after that “wall of death”.

JB. (Laughs) I know, I think it was like a 1pm slot, and that was an early one for everyone…It was insane to see that happening for us. We loved it!

SR. Does the energy of the crowd and your interaction with them comes pretty naturally for you?

JB. I think it just comes like on stage. And I think it’s been important to us throughout our journey because we’ve played just the tiniest venues to like massive ones. And I’d like to think that there’s no difference in terms of output that you give. Like, for example, where about before we go on in this Parkway Drive arena tour, we’re playing this 250 cap-room in Melbourne.

It’s just for fun, just to warm it all up and dust off the cobwebs. And I don’t know, the way I see it is just to bring the exact same of energy and show that we would in that small venue, as we would to the big arenas. I think we’ve gotten used to, we’re lucky at this stage of our career that we can sort of like bring it along production and do all the bells and whistles to make it look fancier with just lighting and pyros.

But I think the most important part is the energy and the attitude you put into performance, because without that, it’s just, you know, feel need to get people’s attention as much as you can. And I think we pride ourselves on being able to do that. We pride ourselves on being able to capture the audience and kind of really want to get them in the palm of your hand, so you can just push them to the next level is as much as yourself is.

I like to think that by the time we’re off stage, they’re sweating as much as we are. So that’s the trade off.

SR. The band has evolved a lot in recent times. You guys are now more performative, more theatrical, from your stage presence, to your outfits and piercings. What was the conscious thinking around these? When did the shift happen for you guys?

JB. I think it was always there. I think the music and culture I grew up on, like late 90s, was very, very important because that was the first time I ever saw, like, heavy music in the spotlight, because you saw sort of a lot of artists just looking bigger and better than ever.

And the visuals is what took me like, that’s how I recognized things. That’s how I got sucked into things and how I found a lot of the music that I listened to still to this day. And I think it went missing somewhere along the line or maybe just didn’t get introduced into our niche, in metal core as much.

I don’t know, I just wanted to kind of fly the flag for that a little bit and bring some exciting, like looks in that people had never seen before. And like this whole album cover for the new record, I wanted to make it just something crazy from like, it would look like something of a Marilyn Manson album cover or something.

I don’t know, it’s just a fun, like a little, it’s a fun little sort of thing to play with on side, because I think the the imagery just reflects the music just as much like all the art forms that we are involving ourselves in and just as important as one another. And I think if you’re slacking on one, it will affect the others sake.

I just want to present the full package to people. So whether it be visually, sonically and esthetically, that’s that’s all we can shoot for. So I’m just really happy that we’ve been able to tie all of those things together. And speaking of that, you have this conception that you always release EPs and now this will be like an LP finally.

SR. Speaking about that. “What I’ll leave behind” will be your first LP. Everything before was released as an EP. What made you finally decide going in full LP mode?

JB. I think I’m after finally getting to experiment as much as we did with the EP’s after Covid. We we just wrote so much different music, and it felt very jarring to put it all into an album and put it straight out back.

So, we would basically kind of put it all together in ways that would fit together. So we put all the heavy stuff in an EP, we put all the it big chorus kind of catchy songs in Money Pay, and then we put all the electronic stuff in this dirty pay, and I don’t know, it’s such a really rewarding experience because we got to see what our fans and like, and we could introduce new things to them at the same time. And we saw what everyone’s okay. And it was kind of like a public like ten road test, to be honest. And after all of that, we we saw all the feedback, we saw what hit and what works and what didn’t. And I don’t know, I feel like this record that we did was a pay off of all that experimentation, and we could finally combine it all and not make it feel jarring.

We could put it all into one, one bottle, stare it all up, and I feel like what we came out with was kind of like a version of everything we’ve experimented on ever. But just all coherently in one record. And I don’t know, it really works well for us, and it was a very healthy way to experiment, I think.

“…This is realistically the quintessential Void Vision record…”

It just felt right. And I think everything about this record has felt right. This is realistically the quintessential Void Vision record, and I’m just so happy that we finally got to do it because we have been like, looking for years of just what our what the correct way to express ourselves is. And I feel like there may not be like a correct way to do it, but I think we’ve been pretty damn fucking close on this one.

SR. We can feel that, and congratulations o the release of the song “Blood for blood” it’s perfect for when you need to release some anger. Also this song feels like  an amplification of your industrial digital brand of electronic metalcore. Was that the intention? How this song came to be?

JB. So at that moment we’re kind of writing from the industrial and electronic moments first, so I feel like as I’ve said, we’ve been working for just so long for just over ten years now on just all the instrumentation and how a band would usually write a song, and it is really the element that we wanted to add.

We wanted to add something on top of all of that, just to differentiate this from the pack. And I think James, guitarists in particular is like, it’s so good with discovering new sounds and I know all these industrial elements that you’re speaking of. He’s just really clicked on to I don’t know how to present them alongside what we usually do and glue it all together without it feeling for still like, I don’t know, like he’s shoehorning it in, but, yeah, he’s definitely starting a lot more with the electronic elements.

First off and foremost, which is cool because I find they definitely generate the most attention in our songs. Like we said in Blood for blood, there’s a lot going on in there that it’s just yeah, it’s a crazy experience because it is kind of like genre mashing in a sense. And yeah, I don’t know that one in particular.

He’s a he’s a very big Skrillex fan. And then, you know, okay, I definitely like Rob Bell for him a lot, especially for black for blood. So yeah, there’s a lot going on there with that influence. But yeah, there’s a lot sprinkled throughout this record. Yeah. So it’s like there’s a lot of,  references throughout there…there’s all sorts of just fun little electronic moments that we’re just so stoked on because it has differentiated us from the pack a lot. And I don’t know, it’s cool having that kind of identity off on your own now.

SR. “What I’ll Leave Behind” seems like a perfect name for the album. Who came up with it?

JB. Funnily enough, Sean from Make Them Suffer gave me the name. He came up with the name. We were on tour in Europe and we were. We saw them last week or something. Yeah, yeah. We were showing them just each other’s album. We were showing each other our records and just, like, sharing our new music with one another, and the interlude of our record, Beautiful Things came on, and he, the final lyric of, that song is what I’ll leave behind when I die. And then just out of fucking nowhere after that, I’m hit and the song finished. He just said, like, you should call the album, “what I’ll leave behind” and then I thought, I think you’re right.

it’s just that moment just stuck in my head for just so fucking long and for months. And then it came to a dead day where we needed to call it the whatever the record was. And I just put it down and it started, looked great, felt great. And I think at the end of the day, this record really is like what we will leave behind.

It is a legacy. It’s just everything we’ve ever wanted to do in a record. It’s just the mark that we would like to leave on this earth, and especially for myself, like getting very personal with it was just an important moment and I loved it. I’m able to share that with people because it’s a very rare privilege people get to do, like many walks of life, will go through their existence and kind of not have the opportunity to leave a mark, and I think luckily, I’ve fallen into one where I can put out some art and it can be just kept there forever. It’s like a little bit of my soul in a CD that can just be passed on for generations on end, and even if no one finds it, it it exists out there and it is able to be found.

I think that’s just such a special opportunity that I’ll never take for granted. And yeah, I think that’s really what we’re trying to do with this album is leave something behind.

SR. You are about to go on tour with Parkway Drive too. How are you guys getting ready for those shows? – I dont think I’ll be on the pit for that one, I don’t think I’d survive, I’m too old now (laughs)

JB. (Laughs) Agreed, I’m not at all like, I don’t refer to myself as an old guy or anything, but bloody hell, like, I’d love sitting down at some of these shows too (laughs).

These shows are a treat. We’ve been so busy just preparing for this. We’ve had a few hurdles pop up. For example, our guitarist James was working crew on that Make Them Suffer tour, and he had an accident. He had a fall and he fractured his elbow. Being the guitarist…That’s not necessarily the best, best position to be in.

“…Australian music and heavy music in particular. It’s that a whole new level right now. I’m very excited to be a part of it…”

But he’s still, performing like this on tour. He’s just, He’d be doing a lot of the synth work and the electronics, like we were talking about, and we’ve brought in our producer Sam to fill up guitar, but it all just came together so smoothly. And I think with our team, like our crew, it’s everyone’s just so fucking good at what they do that even in an emergency like that, we can just come up with a solution and just steamroll ahead like nothing’s changed.

We’re still going into the same preparation. It’s been. It’s been awesome. Like I said, we’re very excited for this. It’s going to be a crazy to us going insane…Australian music and heavy music in particular. It’s that a whole new level right now. I’m very excited to be a part of it.

SR. Speaking about live shows. What was your most memorable moment from your Knotfest 2023 tour?

JB. Funnily enough, we, we were all just sitting around in catering each and every every date of that. Slipknot had a separate kind of area just for themselves and for their friends and family. But, I think it was in Brisbane, one of the guys who just, like, come over into the general area in backstage where we are always eating, catering, and we were like a bunch of the dudes on my table recognized one of them, it was Sid from Slipknot, they recognized him because of his tattoos and everyone was kind of freaking out, I didn’t even recognize him because I was too busy looking at Kelly Osborne next to him, they were just hanging out.

I think everyone on the table was so, so stoked to see someone in Slipknot. But I couldn’t believe I was standing next to Kelly. That was my star moment!

SR. We read in another interview, you guys almost got hit by a bushfire while filming a music video?

JB. God, yeah!…Probably like 2022, I think. And yeah, we made a good call on that day. We, decided not to fuck around and find out.

It’s extremely, extremely ironic because two years later that was, in Thornhill’s sort of like warehouse where they stored everything and their warehouse burned down two years later. Sometimes it’s just unavoidable. And, yeah, it was just a very unfortunate incident, but it’s crazy. It’s very crazy to say that actually happened.

SR. What’s the weirdest item you have ever signed for a fan?

JB. I had a guy’s prosthetic leg, so I just took it off and signed it under the table…I try to take a photo now every time I sign something really weird because I want to remember for interviews like this. Because I always forget (laughs).

SR. Just to finish. Any message for your fans?

JB. Thanks a lot for your time and I appreciate everything you do, like for the heavy music and everything. So thank you!

PARKWAY DRIVE
20 YEAR ANNIVERSARY TOUR

WITH SPECIAL GUESTS
I PREVAIL (USA)
THE GHOST INSIDE (USA) + VOID OF VISION

WEDNESDAY 18 SEPTEMBER – BRISBANE ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE, BRISBANE ADDITIONAL SHOW ADDED
FRIDAY 20 SEPTEMBER – BRISBANE ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE, BRISBANE SOLD OUT
SATURDAY 21 SEPTEMBER – QUDOS BANK ARENA, SYDNEY FINAL TICKETS
SUNDAY 22 SEPTEMBER – JOHN CAIN ARENA, MELBOURNE SOLD OUT
TUESDAY 24 SEPTEMBER – JOHN CAIN ARENA, MELBOURNE ADDITIONAL SHOW ADDED
FRIDAY 27 SEPTEMBER – AEC ARENA, ADELAIDE FINAL TICKETS
MONDAY 30 SEPTEMBER – RAC ARENA, PERTH VENUE UPGRADE

Tickets from destroyalllines.com