Forgive Me Father I Have Strayed…
Onto the path of metalcore, led by the Long Island giants SFTP and now armed with album number nine are wielding their rage and chaos driven output to the baying public. All is not well in the world, we know this, we see it, we suffer it and in some small way try our damnedest to change it.
‘Have you lost your goddamn mind?’ is the question that reverberates around collective heads, it is a plea to think for yourself, don’t follow the crowd, and most definitely ‘don’t drink Kool-Aid from the cult leader’.
Bang on time we have our friend Brendan Murphy(Counterparts) to add his power bomb to the proceedings and pin you into submission. Hold onto your hats folks and feel the ‘Kickback’ at twice the intensity and not a shred of pity.
‘The First Will Be Last’ contains a mega gargantuan breakdown at 2.01, one of many of this record, and really my friends, find a hand to hold, quickly.
The rap influenced ‘Fortune Teller’ contains the anthemic chant of ‘Firewalk with me’ I can see many of us respond with, name the time and the place, and we will go boldly, fearlessly.
A contender for album of the year? SFTP say ‘hold my beer’ while they launch into a ‘Second Death’ with the story of how society operates, whether it’s familial, corporate or state sanctioned it is a ‘a cover up of the highest scale, they’re never caught’ and the words ‘a special place in hell’ are brought to mind. The stinging tale of survival and the single mum is told in ‘Beneath The Surface’, alongside the twist of complex lives, sometimes you don’t even scratch the surface. Dig a little deeper, if you dare, if you care.
We come full circle my friends as we learn that we haven’t really learnt anything from history, we are living through the same horrors our parents/grandparents did, it’s just societal changes and advancements in technology and ways of living. The stand out track for me is ‘Holding Cells For Living Hells’ dealing with mental illness and how it affects us all, it is harrowing in its dialogue and imagery, written possibly by the disturbed, for the disturbed as it is they who will recognise what they hear, and envisage the despair and torment. We have the second guest appearance on this album and it is Matt Honeycutt(Kublai Khan) and they go in with right-left-right hook to send you down to the canvas, don’t bother getting up my friends as the punishing finisher is en route, just lie back and take the pain. It is time for actions, enough thoughts and prayers, maybe through the protester’s disruption and shutdown something has to give.
….Be at peace child, I have absolved you. Now excuse me while I spontaneously combust.
Stray From The Path – Internal Atomics out now via UNFD