Apr
09
5.24pm

STRAY FROM THE PATH // The Path Less Traveled


Hardcore juggernauts Stray From The Path have never been afraid of a little controversy. Their latest record, Only Death is Real is a testament to this.

With their tour supporting the new record just around the corner, Hysteria caught up with the bands resident shredder Tom Williams to talk touring, politics and online abuse.

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Hysteria: How’s the tour going?

Tom: It’s going great! We’re on tour with Counterparts who have been some of our closest friends for seven or eight years. We’re in Japan now, it’s one of our favourite places ever. Next we’re going to South East Asia which we’ve never been to before and then we have Australia and New Zealand so it’s always a great time.

How’re you feeling about how Australian crowds will receive the new album live?

It still remains to be seen but going off our experiences in the past it’s always awesome. I think it’s going to go over well, Australia has a lot of love for Stray From The Path and we have a lot of love for Australia so I’m excited to find out.

I’ll try to keep this brief as I’m sure this is the question you’ve been asked a million times! Obviously music is all about expressing yourself and your opinions, but did you expect the opinions on the new record, particularly on tracks like Goodnight Alt Right would generate such a buzz?

(Laughs) Well I guess I knew that it was going to cause a little controversy because it just always does but I didn’t think it would blow up the way it did, especially getting to people like Richard Spencer and Alex Jones. I look back on it and think it’s kind of funny but when it was going down it was definitely very intense.

I was kind of blind sighted by it because we always picture ourselves as four kids that just got lucky making a living out of playing hardcore/metalcore music. Sometimes you forget to look at yourself from that perspective and notice that the band does have some popularity across the world and that it’s going to reach people bigger than what we thought. But it’s not going to change anything, we’ve always done this, it’s just that we’re in a time where these people aren’t afraid to come out anymore, especially on the internet and they like to voice their horrible opinions, which is why we made the song. If anything now, I like that if anyone thinks that we are incorrect they can just scroll down on the YouTube comments and see what we’re talking about, it’s right there for them.

The political climate in America is a joke and police brutality is still an issue and there are no signs of it getting better. I hope that one day we’ll be able to write a record about driving in a convertible with the top down but there’s nothing that’s showing us that it’s going to be like that one day.
[ Tom Williams ]

How’d you deal with the criticism? Was it hard to cope with?

No. I mean it wasn’t easy to take but it wasn’t our fans. It wasn’t the people that supported our band; it was just a bunch of people that are like 50 years old that were just going crazy on us because that’s what everyone was doing. When there’s smoke there’s fire and it’s going to attract a lot of people that think they can gang up on some lefties or whatever they want to call us. I think it would be a bigger deal to me if it was the people that liked our band saying that they didn’t like the message but I think it’s pretty safe to say that the majority of them are going to.

I don’t want to get into likes and dislikes on a YouTube video because I’m an adult and it’s not something that matters, but I know we had a ton of dislikes from a bunch of people that were told to go there but if you also look at the likes on it it’s more than we’ve ever had on any of our videos. I’m psyched that people had our backs.

In America now you still can’t really tell what the climate is like for our band but overseas it’s been awesome. We haven’t done Australia and New Zealand yet but as far as Canada, England and Europe go the tours we’ve done off this album have been the biggest shows we’ve ever played as a headlining band. In America it might be different because the political climate is insane but outside of America everyone is looking at that political climate because it’s insane and they are in agreeance with us.

So it wasn’t tough to deal with, if anything once we started playing shows… I mean the minute we played Goodnight Alt Right live for the first time and the place erupted and went crazy all of it went away and I thought that shit is meaningless. Those people don’t come to our shows but these people do and they are with us and that’s better than people going at us for a couple of weeks before they move on to Kathy Griffin or whatever other topic they want to talk about.

Did you ever set out to be this iconic politically inspired band or did it just happen?

I appreciate you saying that, but no. Me and Drew (York, vocalist) have been best friends since the sixth grade and all we wanted to do was be in a band and take after the bands that inspired us. It’s why we get compared to Rage Against the Machine and Refused a lot because those are the bands we grew up listening to. When I started playing music Rage Against the Machine went away and Refused went away and, not that we ever said that we wanted to take the reins from two truly iconic bands, but that’s the kind of sound that we were missing from music that I wanted to write. You can even look at our albums Villains and Make Your Own History, we talk a lot about becoming an adult and finding out how crooked the financial system is and how when you go out there and get a job it’s tough to do anything.

Then we went on from those albums to Rising Sun and Anonymous, and on Anonymous we started to become more aware of the political climate of our country and the world and police brutality and that’s what we started talking about. The band has always been an outlet for us to talk about what makes us mad and that’s where it’s coming from and now with Only Death is Real and Subliminal Criminals it’s only accelerated because there’s so much stuff that makes us mad. The political climate in America is a joke and police brutality is still an issue and there are no signs of it getting better. I hope that one day we’ll be able to write a record about driving in a convertible with the top down but there’s nothing that’s showing us that it’s going to be like that one day.

Right now we’re booked up until early 2019 supporting Only Death is Real, but we’re definitely going to step it up musically and a year from now who knows where the political climate will be and who knows what kind of songs we’re going to be writing.
[ Tom Williams ]

It’s definitely a heavy thing but I feel like if you’re fortunate enough to have these crowds at your shows like we have it’s important to give them something to go home with. I feel like a lot of bands are successful because music is a turn off for people, they want to forget about their jobs or school or their relationships with their families; they want to turn off from that and go to a show and not be challenged to think which is okay because I feel like everyone needs that. That’s what sports does for me (laughs). At seven o’clock when the Rangers are playing, I’m watching it and I don’t care who the president is, I have to for my own sanity.

But those bands aren’t really testing people, I don’t really agree with that. I mean it’s not that I don’t agree with it, I just know what it’s like to feel inspired by artists like Zack De La Rocha (of Rage Against the Machine) and Dennis Lyxzén (of Refused) or anything like that and what feeling inspired meant to me and I wanted to do that when I was growing up. We were lucky with this stage and we want to make the best of it. Whether they agree with us or whether they don’t, I think people can say that we always leave our passion, our energy and our message on the stage every night no matter what.

I really feel like you’ve produced your hardest riffs on the new record. Did you try to step it up this time around or did you just get more aggressive with all that’s going on in the world?

I appreciate that too (laughs). It really takes a couple of songs to get the feel of where I want to go, I never really sit down and go okay this is where I want to go I just try to let the riffs come out of me. This time around we have Craig (Reynolds) on drums which has been a godsend to this band. On and off stage we’ve made the chemistry really quick. Most of the time in the past it would be that I would write the record on my own and then bring it to the band here and there and we’d change a couple of things so a lot of the pressure was on me. For Only Death is Real, I remember I went to the first writing session with six or seven songs done and we didn’t even use any of them. We just started making stuff on the fly off the ideas that Craig had. I think he’s really helped the band step up as far as the anger and aggressiveness goes and I think it’s going to get even more aggressive on the next one as well.

The cover art of the album itself is a game of chess, was this intentional to represent the idea that life’s a game where outside factors have the power?

It is actually. This is the first album we’ve ever done where we had the artwork before we had the record. You can see it from the king all the way down to the pawn that it gets smaller as you go down the totem pole.  I feel like it’s the best representation to give of where you really are. It’s supposed to be that the rook is the police, the knight is the military, the bishop is the church, the queen is the banks and the king is the elite. The way we want to put it is that you are so insignificant and you could be sacrificed for their agenda at any time, like a game of chess. People always use the pawn to protect the king and in the king’s interest so that’s the kind of symbolism we wanted to have on the cover.

What are the plans for the next record?

We’re just starting to get into that, literally as of last night. Right now we’re booked up until early 2019 supporting Only Death is Real, but we’re definitely going to step it up musically and a year from now who knows where the political climate will be and who knows what kind of songs we’re going to be writing. We’re always on the gas and we’re never on the brakes, I’m excited to find out what’s coming up next for us but we’ll see. We tend to stay on this trend of putting out an album every two years because we always have an ear to the ground and ideas flowing through us, we have to get it out somehow! I imagine 2019 we will start working on it and it’ll maybe have a release later in the year but we’re focused on Only Death is Real for now and touring around the world on it for the near future.

Who knows, the next record might be full of songs about driving around in your convertible!

(Laughs) That’s what my other band is for, writing songs that aren’t so angry.



Catch Stray From The Path with Counterparts at the following dates:

FRIDAY 13 APRIL: AMPLIFIER BAR, PERTH (18+)
Tickets available via www.oztix.com.au

SATURDAY 14 APRIL: CORNER HOTEL, MELBOURNE (18+)
Tickets available via www.cornerhotel.com

SUNDAY 15 APRIL: PHOENIX YOUTH CENTRE, MELBOURNE (All Ages)
Tickets available via www.oztix.com.au

MONDAY 16 APRIL: FOWLERS LIVE, ADELAIDE (Licensed All Ages)
Tickets available via www.oztix.com.au

WEDNESDAY 18 APRIL: FACTORY THEATRE, SYDNEY (Licensed All Ages)
Tickets available via www.factorytheatre.com.au

THURSDAY 19 APRIL: SMALL BALLROOM, NEWCASTLE (18+)
Tickets available via www.oztix.com.au

FRIDAY 20 APRIL: WOOLLY MAMMOTH, BRISBANE (18+)
Tickets available via www.moshtix.com.au



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