Stray from the Path just surprise-released their final album – they tell us why they did it: “It’s what people want, and it’s what I want”
“I’m tired of the fucking pre-order and ‘three months of me telling you about it’ thing!” Stray from the Path guitarist/co-founder Tom Williams loudly declares. “I’d rather just give it to you!”
It’s 9 May, and Williams has just joined me on a video-call from his New York home. In exactly three weeks, his rap-metalcore unit will release their latest album, Clockworked. The twist, however, is that none of the Long Islanders’ fans know it’s coming – and they won’t until the day it drops.
What we’ll all later discover however, is that this isn’t the only twist. It’s also going to be their final LP – a secret so closely guarded that Williams won’t even reveal it in this interview. It makes the decision to surprise-announce it all the more unique.
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“People like it on Netflix, when they just give you all the episodes [at once],” the guitarist reasons, answering my first question of, ‘Why?’. “If you like it, you can binge it and go back and watch it. And so, that’s what we’re doing.”
Stray have put out 11 albums as of Clockworked (well, nine if you ask Williams, who discounts their early, self-released efforts), but this is the first time they’ve done things like this. The band have been unloading forthright, political tracks for more than two decades now, and the gaps between their release dates have always been less than three years. After a career that long and prolific, as well as managing several artists on the side, Williams is openly fed up with the typical roll-out process.
“I manage [Canadian metalcore act] Counterparts, and we surprise-released the Heaven Let Them Die EP in November,” he says. “That’s when it really clicked for me. Everyone was like, ‘Thank God! No fucking pre-order! The vinyl ships now!’ It’s what people want, and it’s what I want: I’m a consumer, too! People pre-order records and sometimes the record doesn’t even show up the day it comes out. It’s ridiculous!”
Image: Press
Surprise Surprise
Surprise-released albums are rare in rock and metal, and they’ve historically seen the artist in question sacrifice commercial success. In 2016, Avenged Sevenfold put out prog metal odyssey The Stage with zero warning and reached number four on the US charts, down from the number one position of its two predecessors. A Day to Remember took an even more dramatic slide earlier this year with Big Ole Album Vol. 1, which came out physically a month before hitting streaming services.
“Charting was important in 2016, but charting in 2025, no one cares,” Williams counters. “I get an email every week about first-week sales and they’re just lower and lower and lower and lower. We charted back in the day, when it mattered, and that was cool, but right now, it’s more important for me to present the record in a way that’s fun and exciting and fulfilling.”
Though the manner in which Clockworked is charging out into the world is different, some things never change, and Stray remain righteously furious at the powers that be. The album’s title – and artwork, which depicts a naughts-and-crosses game that’s one move away from ending – alludes to how the political elite have manipulated the masses to turn on each other based on such surface-level qualities as skin colour and gender.
“They want you to pick a side,” explains Williams. “That’s why there’s a lyric [in the title track] that says, ‘Open your eyelids, your ass got clockworked!’ You fell for it! We’ve all fallen for it, at some point.”
Opener Kubrick Stare, which came out as an ostensibly standalone single in February, likens social media doom-scrolling to the unhinged way several characters in Stanley Kubrick’s filmography wildly gaze at the camera. Can I Have Your Autograph? lacerates those who still support the Israeli military amid the atrocities in Gaza. Meanwhile, Shot Caller targets CEOs who oversee corrupt healthcare companies. It’s seemingly tragically prophetic, given Clockworked was written and recorded months before UnitedHealthcare head Brian Thompson was murdered last December.
“At that point [after Thompson was shot], we were like, ‘Fuck, should we drop the song?’” Williams reveals. “But then I was like, ‘It could just feel corny.’”
Another track that the band toyed with releasing early was Fuck Them All To Hell: a takedown of both mainstream US political parties that’s musically as un-subtle as its name. “We were supposed to put it out on election day in America,” says Williams. “We wrote and finished it while Biden was in office, so it was going to be Biden vs Trump. Terrible. Then Kamala Harris steps in. I’m no Kamala supporter, but Tim Walz had some progressive bones in his body. We were like, ‘Do we want to fuck with that if he’s trying?’”
Battle Plate
All the political songs are as fiery as their lyrics, with Drew York rapping and snarling atop Williams’ rapidfire riffs, as well as Anthony Altamura’s bass and Craig Reynolds’ drumming. There’s vulnerability in the likes of Can’t Help Myself, though, which is musically calmer and sees York discuss his past addiction battles.
“I’ve known him since sixth grade,” Williams says of his singer, “and I’ve seen him struggle with all of it. He’s gone from drugs to alcohol to prescription drugs, but now, Drew is completely sober. He found this discipline for himself, which is really cool.”
As our time together nears its close, I ask: is the goal for Clockworked is to prove to other artists that the usual trap of ‘single, promo cycle, album release, tour, repeat’ can be broken – and broken successfully?
“People are starting to privy to that already,” Williams answers, “because it’s undeniable. Music listeners don’t want to wait. They don’t want to deal with bullshit. I hope artists start thinking forward, and then everyone can take my ideas and claim they were theirs. That’s the goal, right?”
In the larger scale of things, based both on Clockworked and the 10 other diatribes they’ve unleashed beforehand, it seems Stray also have the goal of societal upheaval. Social media addiction, the upper classes’ greed, warfare – these are all injustices within the new songs’ crosshairs. But, Williams doesn’t want to give away his aspirations for the band’s new music until it’s in everybody else’s ears and hands.
“What we have planned, people will find out when we drop the record,” the guitarist says. “If you’re reading this before you’ve read our announcement… go and read what we said in our announcement.”
As it turns out, what they have planned is a coda – Clockworked will in fact be the band’s final record. “The four of us, Anthony, Craig, Drew and Tom, have been touring together as a unit for almost 10 years, and now it feels like the right time to put the band to rest,” that statement read. “We’ve gone on to make amazing records together, tour the world, and have been fortunate to gain the support of people, more than we could have asked for.”
“We get to go out on our own accord, on a final record and do some final tours celebrating the band one last time with the people who gave us a great career,” they said. “Listen to Clockworked and keep your eyes peeled for further touring announcements.”
A happy surprise wrapped in a sad one for fans old and new – but one things for sure, they’re doing everything their own way.
Clockworked is out now
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