“Music is meant for reaction”, guitarist Tom Williams stated in an interview with Legends Arising. Stray From The Path is known for their authentic style of metallic hardcore and honest, meaningful lyrics. They despise fake people, fake bands and fakeness in general and proclaim the gospel of honesty. “Even if the kids listen to it, but don’t agree to what [we]’re saying, they’re thinking of something… And that’s what music should be about”, Williams adds.

Rising Sun deals with numberous personal issues and takes the band’s sincerity to another level. After releasing Villians and Make Your Own History on Sumerian Records, Stray From The Path is on the urge of exploding. Their energy level seems limitless and they’re raging harder than ever. Stray From The Path sticks to their own sound on Rising Sun: you get what you expect from a Stray record, yet the band succeeded to progress in their authenticy.

There are some interesting guest performances on Rising Sun. Second track ‘Death Beds’ brings Jonathan Vigil‘s (The Ghost Inside) skills on the table: his low screams carefully balance with singer Drew York‘s high screeches. The song deals with the ignorance of the American “nightmare”. ‘Bring It Back To The Streets’ is about the influence of technology on today’s society and this vision is supported by Comeback Kid‘s Andrew Neufeld. As Williams told us in the interview, there’s another song about religion on the new record. Well respected in the Christian scene, Norma Jean‘s frontman Cory Brandan supports Stray From The Path’s ideas on bands who claim to be Christian, however use this as a selling point. The song contains spoken word parts, but the main point is that the “Prey” get slaughered within three minutes. ‘Prey’ is a raging beast and definitely one of the best songs of Rising Sun.

Besides the impressive guest performances, Stray From The Path offer some strong tracks on Rising Sun. ‘iMember’ and ‘The Laughing Man’ are my personal favorites. Also, you can’t miss the influence of Rage Against The Machine on this record, with the Tom Morello style guitar riffs in ‘The Escape Artist’ as example.

Stray From The Path did again what they do best: to stray from the path. Critics might say that Rising Sun is not as renewing as they hoped for, but I think that the band followed their own path of authenticy and progressed in their own ways. The band succeeded yet again to express their honest and pissed off message, and this is definitely our favorite album of the month.