Stray From The Path Talk Acts That Have 'Strayed From The Path And Created Genuine Change

Stray From The Path have been bringing their charged-up hardcore fury and politically outspoken lyricism to the masses for the better part of two decades, aiming to be the kind of band that can be a gateway to both heavy music and radical ideas.

The Long Island, NY hardcore heavyweights, released their cracking new album Euthanasia on Friday via UNFD. The darkest and heaviest work of the band's career, drawing on challenging circumstances to create a record that pulls no punches sonically or lyrically.

Clearly the work of a more weathered and visceral era of Stray From The Path--the tremendous riffs and hip-hop-meets-hardcore vocal cadences are still there, but this time they're accompanied by an apocalyptic mood that draws the listener in and doesn't let go.

Produced by scene luminary Will Putney, (Knocked Loose, Body Count, Every Time I Die) the record reflects the grimmer personal and global circumstances that surrounded and inspired its creation. 

In celebration of Euthanasia's release, we caught up with guitarist Tom Williams for a conversation about the artists that he believes have truly strayed from the path and created genuine change through their music. 

Acts That Have Strayed From The Path And Created Genuine Change with Tom Williams of Stray From The Path 

Rage Against The Machine

"This may be cliche but Rage Against The Machine. I just saw them three times on their reunion tour and at every show,  on their screen, they were highlighting victims of all this brutality locally, wherever they were playing, and at every show, they were donating proceeds of the show to local charities."

"Whereas like a lot of people, while I guess it's better than nothing, a lot of people will sometimes just like give their money to mainstream charities like Red Cross. They don't really look into it, whereas there are a lot of places that are affected locally that do actual work within the communities of the cities that they're in and Rage did that for every place that they went to on their tour. So to me, they're number one and they set the example for me."

Stick To Your Guns

"I would say Stick to Your Guns. Their singer Jesse who is on our record is like family to us. He has a mutual aid program he does in Los Angeles which Stray did a collaboration with his mutual aid fund to give as much money as possible to them because what they do is give food, clothing, shelter, hygienic products and just stuff that they need every day to homeless people and houseless people in Los Angeles. They are a band that walks the walk." 

Architects

"Architects is another one. They raise a lot of awareness and do stuff directly with Sea Shepherd and stuff that helps the environment. "

Anti-Flag

"We toured with the Anti-Flag in 2016 and we did a lot of stuff together. They've always set an example by highlighting things that are not necessarily talked about in public, making sure that you use your platform for your band to lift up some things locally and stuff like that. I think the biggest thing is doing stuff locally because you'll see when bands that aren't traditionally into helping out communities and stuff and whatnot. I don’t want to shit on any of these bands that do this, but when they just don't know or they're inexperience of it, a lot of people will just go and give money to like the Red Cross or whatever, and just, it kind of doesn't really go anywhere."

Enter Shikari

"Enter Shikari all use their platform to help the communities that give these bands a career. They all try to give back as much as they can."

"To me, those five bands have always been the standard for that stuff within our scene."

Euthanasia is out now via UNFD.