Grove Street guitarist Chris ‘Sandy’ Sanderson guides us through the making of the band’s debut album, ‘The Path To Righteousness’, out now via UNFD.
Hunting Season
“‘Hunting Season’ was written to highlight how being obsessed with scrutinising each other and watching people fall from grace, rather than helping each other and seeing people succeed, is hindering society, stopping it from flourishing. This kind of behaviour is detrimental to progression, both individually and as a collective.”
Lessons Of The Past
“‘Lessons Of The Past’ focuses on police brutality, abuse of power, systemic oppression and racism. People not taking a stand against these things only encourages them to manifest further, and we as people must do better to hold those in power accountable.”
Caught Slippin’
“‘Caught Slippin’’ was born out of the frustration I found myself in during the years where I was working jobs that I hated doing just to be able to facilitate pursuing what I wanted to do in life – chasing a career in what I love (sound engineering / production) and touring in this band. But working 50 hours a week just to scrape by and have the bare necessities to be able to work towards those aspirations would just set me back from where I wanted to be anyway. I felt like I was in a constant mental battle with being miserable for 5 days a week just for 2 days of enjoyment and the only way to go through that battle for the rest of my life was to make a proactive plan before it was too late.”
The Path To Righteousness
“‘The Path To Righteousness’ represents and explores escapism & the importance of having outlets or vices to help forget about the struggles of life, and the paradoxical irony of how escaping every day life improves every day life. The track itself came together pretty organically in the practice room. I remember listening to Suicidal Tendencies and Power Trip at the time and wanted to capture a hybrid of groove and fast thrashy vibes. We wanted the last section to build and then finish strong and heavy. The repetitive vocal hook was added last minute in the studio, but it fast became my favourite part!”
Ulterior Motives
“‘Ulterior Motives’ is a song that goes through the motions of someone who is stuck in a toxic and abusive relationship with someone or something -be it a partner, friend or substance, or even a vice like gambling – and cannot find a way out. They keep getting pulled back into the situation at hand; they’re in love, addicted, and can’t see the impact of damage that’s being done to them, because they’ve got rose tinted glasses on. The second verse changes focus from the relationship/addiction itself to how people around that person turn a blind eye to what’s going on, because it’s easier for many to just play ignorant to issues than to call it out or address it, which in turn just enables the problem to manifest further. The outro finds the person coming to the realisation that they’re better off out of the relationship/addiction, and in order to live a better life they gotta move on.
Musically this is one of our favourite tracks on the record, I feel like it captures our sound as a whole perfectly; from the bouncy hip-hop inspired grooves in the intro that lead into the thrash feel. The outro is personally my proudest part of the record, I remember writing that and being so surprised with myself – like, where the fuck did that come from!!”
Born II Lose
“‘Born II Lose’ was the 2nd track we wrote for the record which I think, in hindsight, was before we really found our rhythm for writing the album, we knew we wanted something that had fast thrashy parts and fun bouncy sections and this was basically the outcome of that early stage of writing. It’s about being down on your luck when all you do is strive to put in 110% but all you see is others succeed while you stay in the same place. It can sometimes feel like the only thing separating you from those others is luck and it’s easy to reach the conclusion that you were just born without it but in reality that negative outlook only manifests a negative outcome and distracts & de-motivates you from progressing on your own journey at your own pace.”
Shift
“‘Shift’ explores the issues that modern day society faces from social media such as losing touch with reality, comparing yourself to others, investing time into other random people’s lives through a screen, rather than living and experiencing your own, and how important it is to switch off and reset from it all. Although it was written before, ‘Shift’ kinda follows on from ‘Born II Lose’ in the sense of it explored feeling like you’re left behind whilst everyone else is living their best lives, because that’s all you see on social media: a highlight reel. Before we started writing the lyrics to this track I’d not really considered some of the deeper knock on effects that being immersed in the social media world can and may have had on me personally so the process of writing it was almost like opening a can of worms and highlighted some things to me on a personal level.”
Sick & Tired
“Again, ‘Sick & Tired’ was a fairly early conception on the timeline of writing the record. Musically I feel like this was one of the tracks that came together more organically and quicker than a lot of the others, probably due to the fact that when we wrote it, we had just come off a tour and gone straight into a jam session the very next day, so we were in the right headspace as we were still amped up from playing shows.I think people will be surprised to know that despite the lyrical theme of being trapped in a cycle of monotony without any structure or purpose to your day for months on end, this was actually written pre-lockdown and stemmed from our ex guitarist’s discontent with being unemployed at the time. In hindsight we should have probably put this out during the pandemic – woulda probs got a number one haha!”
T.Y.D.O.
“This was a super fun track to write, essentially it just started as a jam between me and Josh with no pressure or end goal to it other than to just get some juices flowing during a real dry period of writers block. There’s a lot of Municipal Waste influence on this track (who are personally my favourite band), from the way the fast verse drops into the two step beat at the “Doomed to Fail” part, to the party noise and bottles clinking – it’s a proper ripper! We actually used the demo vocals on the album version of this track because they had more vibe to them than in the studio, probably owing to the fact that me, Sul and Andy were all getting loose at Andy’s house when we arranged and recorded them; listening back to what we made the next day was definitely worth the hangover! This is one of my favourite tracks to play live and a certified floor mover, with a great opportunity to get a circle pit going in there which me and Sul always revel in doing on stage! I’m looking forward to people learning the words to this one and getting involved on the mic now it’s out!Lyrically this track is a pissed off Fuck You to the powers that be that put Brexit through, only to turn around and realise it was a bad idea and then leave everyone in the shit to deal with the fall out of it, load of bollocks.”
Cycle Of Grief
“It felt fitting for the the last track we wrote for the record to be the last one on it; whether that was a bit of a subconscious decision is hard to tell, but it definitely felt like everything up til that point in the process had lead up to this track and we knew it had to pack a punch.Initially, the first riff was just something Andy was messing around with at practice while waiting for me and Joe to set up. I remember looking at him like “mate, that’s a fucking riff!”, and he just shrugged like it was nothing – dude doesn’t know his own powers on a guitar, I swear down haha! Anyway, that riff formed the basis of this song. Chorus wise we wanted something super hooky that people could sing along so we stripped the guitars back on the chorus section to let it breath, sometimes that less is more approach really works and I feel like it rings true on this track for that part in particular.Lyrically it delves into the stages of grief, the process and range of emotions/feelings that you go through when you lose someone and how hard it is to rebuild, get back on your feet and carry on in life without them around.”
