Stray From The Path, Orthodox, Diamond Construct @ Lion Arts Factory, Adelaide 21/8/2025
Calling the audience ‘loose units’, inciting fifty crowd surfers to work themselves through one song and advising that Nazi Punks can fuck off are a few of my favourite things and Andrew Dijorio from Stray From The Path delivers all that and more during fifty minutes of insightful – or maybe incite-ful – performance.
It’s Stray From The Path’s last trip round the world, and therefore their last sojourn in Australia. Always manic, confronting and crushing, the guys spew it all up on stage and stand proudly around it.
They are not the only weapons firing. Diamond Construct come out swinging for the fences with Hashira. It’s not often you say that DC are the ‘lightest’ band of the bill however this tour has pushed the band to muscle up their tracks like Enigma, Hit It Back and Death Party and whip the decent sized crowd in a nice warm up. Will be interesting to see what they bring from this tour into their new music.
Nashville’s Orthodox are a bit of unknown quantity for many but man, they delivered like a highly skilled hitman. Opening with Sacred Place vocalist Adam Easterling prowls the stage like an apex predator – eyes wide, focussed, bloodthirsty.
Something this band brings is explosive riffs and breakdowns that will send you to hospital with concussion. The guitars are demonic as song after song such as Head On A Spike and Dread Weight, crack your skull open. We certainly know who they are now.
The sirens wail, and Dijorio’s pre recorded voice speaks. Hair stands up, hearts race and the New Yorkers come in with the punch in the face brutality of Kubrick Stare.
New York hardcore is a different type of gravy. Born out of frustration at a society that pushes lower social classes down, it became a hotbed of social and political angst fused with the cross culture influences of New York music and SFTP deliver that.
Needful Things is a prime example as Dijorio rap matches the attitude of the heavy riffs. Throw in the gang vocals delivered expertly by the crowd and we could be back in NYC in the early 90’s.
May You Live Forever, Dijorio has all the hands in the room bouncing. Dijorio for his part doesn’t stop, jumping from the risers and rebounding from side to side like it’s the last thing he’s ever going to do.
Whether is III and its sadly continuing relevance to police brutality, or asking for, and probably getting, fifty crowd surfers over the barriers during Clockworked, SFTP are as confronting and dangerous as ever.
Backed by epic strobes that accentuate the bands ever shorting fuse to the worlds hypocrisy, SFTP groove as heavy as Sabbath and antagonise as any New Yorker should.
At the end of the powerful fifty minute set, you are left wondering why they are finishing because the world needs more people who disrupt the system. We need more Stray From The Path.
Live Review By Iain McCallum