18 years and 9 albums later, it doesn’t look like Stray From the Path’s rage is about to dwindle. With Internal Atomics, The Long Island group deliver a brilliant summary of what they do best, namely a hot punk/hardcore punk bottle-fed on Rage Against The Machine, full of groove and provocations. The band does not reinvent themselves and are clearly content with the formula that they have been developing over several albums, though it would be in bad faith to say that the tracks don’t hit the mark. Because, as usual with Stray From the Path, what we find here is half an hour of powerful uppercuts leaving no respite to the listener, carried by Drew York’s contagious verve.
As a self-proclaimed left-wing American group (which has kicked up a bit of a commotion on the other side of the pond), the group have no shortage of material and Drew is certainly not afraid to trigger controversy again with his acidic, politically-engaged texts. They cover everything from paedophilic priests (Second Death) to useless politicians (Ring Leader) to antidepressants (Holding Cells for the Living Hell), all set to an insatiable hardcore groove, like on Actions Not Words, a call to global rebellion. The quality guest stars who feature on the album (Brendan Murphy from Counterparts on Kickback and Matt Honeycutt from Kublai Khan on Double Down) add a welcome variation to the work, letting Drew York (but certainly not the listener) catch his breath before he comes back to finish the job. A short, intense, nervous, groovy and above all essential album, which is needed now more than ever a global context of self-pity and powerlessness. The closing sentence of the album, “The choice is yours, change the world!!” sums it up perfectly. © Théo Roumier/Qobuz