#clockworked

“Throw your dreams, down the drain

Everyone accepts it, everything's the same

Conditioned, the mission is "Stay in your lane"

Decisions are given, you cant remain

Outside the lines, identity's a crime

Give the hive what it needs but I do not believe

Exit doors hold empty promises

And all I want is to exist

Whoa, don't think, don't think

Don't fucking question it

No, not even a little bit

You could go and fuck yourself

Stray From The Path have been one of my most cherished bands of all time, hailing from Long Island New York, they’ve been blasting us with their politically charged justice seeking tracks for 24 years now and this will be their 11th album. My 2 favourites are 2015s Subliminal Criminals and then it was love at first listen with 2017s Only Death Is Real, what an album. This is a sad affair as they’re breaking up after this year which has been a hard pill to swallow but I am keen to see how they’re signing off.

“Kubrick State” opens proceedings, the ingredients are all there that lead to a winner, the group vocals working well for them as always giving a fuller sound, crisp and sharp in tone, steady pace and beat, in hindsight it’s a nice warmup for what is to come. “Clockwork” guest features Florent Salfati who is the vocalist for rising French metalcore group LVNDMARKS, it is a reaaaaal slick track, it was a great idea for a collaboration because their styles are similar except SFTP bring the aggressive rap and a certain type of tense groove whereas LVNDMARKS are quirky modern metalcore, the drop at the end slaps the NOS button and I love it. “Bodies in the Dark” guest features Jeff Moreira who is the vocalist from Miami Florida’s Poison the Well, he brings a very obscure occult sounding interlude to an otherwise vicious and harsh song. “Can’t Help Myself” could have easily been on Only Death Is Real, it kicks in like a stick of dynamite and maintains a level of angst and hostility throughout hitting like crushing waves, for me it’s where SFTP are at their finest because they do the big hip hop and harsh metal combination extremely differently to than most acts that try to splice it together. “Can I Have Your Autograph?” Isn’t quite as sharp but could have also been back in that era, got me strutting around like a chicken over here with how thumpy it is. “Fuck Them All To Hell” gives me big President Garrison vibes, the lyrics in “Shot Caller” hit hard “may god have mercy on ya, I won’t” and of course “FACE THE FUCKING WALL”.

They’ve signed off on a great note, not quite Only Death Is Real level but this has been a really good album. I have enjoyed it far much more than the previous 2 albums Euthanasia and Internal Atomics, its more of the Stray From The Path I’ve grown to love over the years. Whatever you do next guys I wish you all the best, I pray I can see you once more before you call it a day.

Stray From The Path – Clockworked

I think Stray From The Path was the first nu-metalcore band I ever listened to, and that’s something I think about from time to time, but it’s only crossing my mind now, because they’ve just dropped their final album, Clockworked. Earlier this week, I saw that they were selling copies of a new album at a festival they were playing, and that they were officially dropping it today (I’m writing this on the May 30th, the day it came out), and I forgot about it until I saw them post about it Thursday night. A few hours after I listened to the album, I saw another post that said they were breaking up after almost 25 years as a band. They decided they just wanted to put the band to rest, and I can understand that, especially if you’ve been doing something for as long as they have. I’ve been a fan of them for quite a long time, too; I found these guys in 2008 when they dropped Make Your Own History, and it was unlike anything I had ever heard, but I loved it. It was the heaviest thing I had heard at that moment, but I didn’t know that it was a rap-metal / nu-metalcore record, although they would slowly move more into that sound over the next decade. Their albums have been spotty in terms of quality ever since, but their crowning achievement will always be 2017’s Only Death Is Real, partially because it was the most realized version of their nu-metalcore sound (and actually featured a couple of rappers on it), and because it features “Goodnight Alt-Right.” If you haven’t heard the song, or you don’t remember, that’s the song that threatens to punch alt-right and neo-Nazi losers. Of course, the alt-right got offended by it, because the shoe just happened to fit in that case. Their last couple of albums have expanded on the nu-metalcore sound of Only Death Is Real, but to diminishing returns.

Apparently people really liked 2022’s Euthanasia, at least from what I saw on Reddit while looking up opinions of Clockworked, but I wasn’t crazy about it. With that said, I did like their newest single, “Kubrick Stare,” and I was wondering if we’d get a new album from them soon enough. It was a biting commentary on how people are desensitized to violence or awful events in the news, whether it’s because we’ve heard about it happen so many times, or we don’t personally experience it. It was a case where their politically-charged lyrics were about something interesting, versus about cringy topics that they’re known to write about at times. Thankfully, that song is on this album, but I was curious about the rest of this thing, especially because it’s their final album. It’s one thing to look at an album from the lens of it being just that – a new album. It’s another thing, however, to look at an album from the lens of it being their last album, so I was curious how they would tackle their swansong. I’ve listened to this record a few times now, and I’m sort of mixed on it, because there is a lot to really like here, but it’s also just another Stray From The Path album. That’s where I’m torn on this record, because you can look at that in two ways: a band could take a big risk on their final album, which could alienate fans, or they could just give the fans what they want and call it day. I can see the pros and cons of both of those, because you could take a huge swing (even if it doesn’t necessarily work) on your final album, since you can do whatever you want, or you can give the fans the final send-off that they deserve by doing what you do best.

That’s essentially what Stray From The Path do here, and Clockworked is a half hour album that doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it does what it does well. That’s the best way I can put it. If you like Stray From The Path, you’ll like this album, but if you don’t, you won’t get anything out of this. This still doesn’t quite top Only Death Is Real, but this album does feature some of their most potent lyrics in years. Songs like “Fuck Them All Hell,” “Shocker,” “Can I Have An Autograph,” and “Can’t Help Myself” deal with subjects like the two-party system in the US, how there are a lot of awful things happening that aren’t surprising to anybody, how the pharmaceutical industry makes addicts out of everyday people, or an indirect callout to how David Draiman of Disturbed signed a bomb in Israel that used again the Palestinians (vocalist Drew York doesn’t call out Draiman by name, but says that he wonders where Disturbed is at, so he can get an autograph). Hearing Stray From The Path call out David Draiman for supporting a pro-Palestinian genocide was not on my bingo card this year, but I’m into it. Like with most of their records, though, there are songs that are weirdly vague in what they’re trying to say, or who they’re about, such as “Shot Caller,” or the title track, but these types of songs always drive me up a wall.

If you listen to these songs on their own, and you don’t know that these guys are a liberal band, you might get the wrong idea, and think that a song like “Shot Caller” wishes for the deaths of the left, or that the title track is about being conditioned to think what the left wants you to think, or whatever the case may be. The title track is a reference to A Clockwork Orange, in that song’s defense, but a lot of conservatives probably wouldn’t pick that up, because something they also lack is media literacy. There are a few other songs, though, that don’t really add anything to the album, like “You’re Not That Guy,” and the song is literally just reciting the meme “you’re not that guy, pal.” The song itself is fine, but those lyrics are pretty bad. “Bodies In The Dark” is also pretty weird, but it does feature the vocalist of Poison The Well, so that’s super dope. As a whole, the lyrics are pretty decent here, and they never get into super cringy or pretentious territory that they have in the past, such as when they point out how something is bad and that’s the whole idea of the song. There’s a song from 2013’s Anonymous that’s about how social media is bad, but it doesn’t add to the conversation, it just points out something we already know. “Kubrick Stare” kind of does that, like we know that people are desensitized, but it does have something more to say about it. Vocalist Drew York sounds great, and he utilizes a mixture of different vocal styles, whether it’s his signature raspy scream, some more half-rapped and half-screamed vocals, or some straight bars here and there. The instrumentation is fine, too, as they do what they do best, but that’s also the extent of it.

GG: Ow-