Biography
Ryan Parrish tracked the core of their best material inside his own basement, running lush guitars straight into digital drum loops instead of leaning on standard post-hardcore bluster. When you spend the early 2000s in bands like Hopesfall and Celebrity, the temptation is always to default to soaring, heavy-handed chorus drama. In Parallel walked away from that trap. They blew years tossing out unfinished sessions and overhauling arrangements just to strip the meat off the bone and figure out how to let cold synthesizer air carry the weight. Getting Ken Andrews of Failure to mix down the tracks was the crucial call. Andrews knows exactly how to make space rock hit like concrete without suffocating the low end in mud. By the time Wiretap picked them up, they had built a lean, nocturnal beast out of shoegaze haze and darkwave rhythms. It is heavy music for people who got completely tired of heavy bands relying on the exact same breakdowns.
Bio from The Clerk
The Arc of In Parallel
The pivots — what forced In Parallel to reinvent.
The Nashville Scraps
Forming quietly in 2011, Lance Black, Jesse Fine, Mark Nash, and Ryan Parrish spent years wrestling with how to step out from their post-hardcore backgrounds. They launched a crowdfunding campaign in 2015 to cut an ambitious seven-song set, then scrapped two separate iterations because the tone just wasn't clicking. When the Broken Codes EP finally surfaced independently in 2018, it revealed a band ditching screaming catharsis for ambient guitars, programmed loops, and meticulous mid-tempo drama. You can hear the trial-and-error in the grooves of tracks like 'Bridge and Tunnel,' where heavy rock instinct meets deliberate restraint.
The Ken Andrews Mix
Rather than booking expensive studio time, Parrish tracked the band's follow-up material directly in his basement home studio throughout 2019. Mark Nash cold-called space-rock authority Ken Andrews to handle mixing duties, handing over tracks that leaned harder into darkwave synthesizers and seamless track transitions. Signing with Wiretap Records, the band dropped the six-song Fashioner EP in September 2020 on 12-inch vinyl. Andrews gave the whole thing a massive, pressurized sheen, proving their sound worked best when cold electronics and washed-out guitars were allowed to collide head-on.
The Wiretap Holding Pattern
Dropping a dark, atmospheric record like Fashioner right into the teeth of late 2020 meant no real touring runway to capitalize on the momentum. The release became an underground word-of-mouth piece for fans tracking the lineage of ex-Hopesfall members and Failure disciples. With only two short-form releases to their name across a decade, the band settled into a quiet holding pattern. The music remains a sharp, tight document of veteran post-hardcore players successfully reinventing themselves around nocturnal mood instead of decibels.
Influences
- Failure — Ken Andrews literally mixed their second record, stamping his signature punchy low-end and space-rock clarity all over the tracks. You hear it immediately in the thick bass tone and wide-open drum presence on Fashioner. It is the direct sonic blueprint for their modern atmospheric rock.
- The Cure — The band openly built their foundational sound out of 1980s dark pop and chorus-drenched rhythm sections. The interplay between driving bass and crystalline, flanged guitar textures on Broken Codes mirrors Disintegration-era song construction. They treat melancholy like a structural element rather than a costume.
- Depeche Mode — Starting their writing process from programmed digital drum loops and pulsing synth beds owes directly to Basildon's finest. The continuous song sequencing and mechanical backbone on Fashioner pull straight from Black Celebration's nocturnal playbook. It keeps their guitar walls from turning into generic alt-rock.
- Hum — Parrish's lineage in the space-tinged post-hardcore scene was born in the wake of You'd Prefer an Astronaut. You hear that legacy in the soaring, heavy guitar sustain on 'Bridge and Tunnel,' balancing drop-tuned mass against dreamy melodic counterpoints. It provides the muscle beneath the electronics.
- Slowdive — The ambient, layered guitar work that forms the bedrock of their sound relies heavily on 1990s shoegaze wash. The ambient reverb trails and delayed chord swells on Broken Codes draw directly from the Souvlaki school of sound design. They use the haze to obscure vocal lines and create real depth.
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