Justice For The Damned - Stay Relentless (Album Review)

Justice For The Damned- Stay Relentless 
Released: August 15, 2025 

Lineup 

Bobak Rafiee // Vocals
Nick Adams // Guitar & Vocals
Kieran Molloy // Guitar
Chas Levi // Drums

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Stay Relentless. The notion itself is a direct call to arms, a warning that what comes next will be served with full strength, harbouring a fixation drawn upon by unbridled rage and power that seeps from deep within one’s soul. The claim is aggressive, the claim is powerful, and within its twelve tracks, it is brought to life in an auditory dictation of absolute power and unequivocal understanding of the message at hand. Justice For The Damned utilise and brutalise their third studio album, situating themselves in an ever-shifting and often unstable genre beast, grabbing it by the horns, and turning the sharp points back towards its own belly. What spills out is the guts of a record born through triumph, travesty, and a truly remarkable return. From the streets of Sydney to the world, relentless they have stayed. 

‍‘Retribution In Blood’ introduces the project ferociously, with the snarling drums immediately churning your stomach and flattening your lips to a frown. Not before long, Rafiee enters the building, perhaps at his most hellish and gnarly. From the get-go, a paralysing dichotomy is found between him and Nick Adams- creating a multifaceted sequence of swirling soundscapes as their vocals, at times, fight ravenously for attention. 

The track effortlessly glides into the well received single of ‘Built To Be Broken’- a track solidifying itself in the heart of the album’s themes, articulating what it takes to return from travesty, and the process of picking up the pieces of what once was; when reconstructed, it may not show the same image, but it still illuminates the heart. Much like this album, JFTD becomes a mosaic, intertwining elements of their past with lessons of the present, creating music that has their future at heart. The guitars in this track are something that always draws me back, swirling like predators in the sea. There is a sense of urgency and impending doom that comes with their presentation, further asserted by the pleas of “Fight For Your Life”. With brief moments to recover, ‘Every Lie You’ve Spoken’ rams its horns into your side. Housing a two-step beat that is sure to create a tsunami within crowds, the track is a fistful of action. It is the shortest and punchiest song on the album, and embeds itself in Justice’s mission of bringing back the pain. With a chant to close out the track, the Sydney band finds themselves mirroring their roots within the Western Sydney mosh style, and this exact youth and energy spill from the track. It is one thing to tap into a feeling long past, but it is another thing for this feeling to have never left you- and for Justice For The Damned, it has long been part of their identity. 

The title track of the album, ‘Stay Relentless’, encapsulates the essence of the project, splattering it on anyone willing to hear it. With a strong backbone curated by the thumping drums of Levi, there is an actual pulse funnelling through the track. It was alive upon my first listen, and it continues to be alive now. Armed with voice as a weapon, Rafiee slashes and mutilates when the blood is already pouring. It continues, however, to be Levi that steals the show, at points turning into a human octopus, conjuring as many beats and thwacks as possible at any given time. The message is simple: to take life as it comes and rise back stronger than ever. With conviction, assertion, and an undeniable air of confidence built from this album's years of formulation, there has never been a more impeccable time to be indoctrinated into the prophecy spewed. 

Throughout the brutality served up fresh hot, there is an undeniable spunk that permeates through Justice For The Damned’s music, and I think no track is more prevalent than within ‘The Current’. There is an underlying groove that translates seamlessly between courageous guitar riffs, to the attitude that beams from the fluctuating vocals; attitudes that, although offering a guiding hand, almost hit like the trope of the cool older brother- there to look out for you, but don’t be seen talking to him in public. There is something so insatiable about this feeling that settles from the track, a swagger, if you will. The breakdown is met with an apt rhetorical: “Will you break down, or will you break through?”, marking one of the hardest calls for mass destruction we’ve seen this year. 

Stay Relentless also sees the Sydney crew adopt the help of some horrifyingly grotesque features. No strangers to collaboration, this album houses both Taylor Barber of Left To Suffer, and Andreas Malm of No Omega. ‘Clawing Wounds’ dials up the insanity immediately, striking auditory influence from many surrounding cores within its first few seconds of playing. Disgustingly unified, the partnership between Barber and Rafiee is astonishingly abhorrent. With no need for competition, their voices intertwine effortlessly, stimulating a track of pure filth- but polished. The choice seems to be a match made in heaven, and lifts the already present duality within this album to a whole new level. There is a contradicting statement to be made with Malm’s feature within ‘Writhing Mass Of Liars’, and it is perhaps the stark difference between the vocals presented that makes it my absolute favourite track on this album. The assertion from Rafiee, juxtaposed with the peril-like distress of Malm, creates such a striking mixture of feelings, and consistently shifts the song between lines. This feeling is represented audibly, too, with a moment of calm among the calamity offered within the final seconds of the track. 

It is within the middle of this album that some real gems can be found. ‘Cry Wolf’ is a song not to be missed. Nestled within longer and bolder titled songs, this two-minute belter dishes up a heavy dose of reality, digging into your spine and burrowing in there, before infesting your very being. It’s a hard-hitter whose power is made all the stronger by some formidable guitar work. The guitars begin harsh and intrusive, heavy for the sake of it. As the song concludes, these tonalities shift into that of a haunting expression, creeping around in the background and creating the most unnerving and unsettling feeling as a listener- it is truly a delight. I also found myself enthralled by ‘Eyes Of A Killer’. In ways, it almost found itself disconnected from this album, purely for the mastery of storytelling and worldbuilding that found itself intertwined within the narrative. Its introduction is foreign to a work like this, using sounds of the natural environment to situate us in a dark field, alone and afraid. It was, however, the conviction of the track that brought it back home. In perhaps the most emotive performance within the body of work, there is a wrenching ache that permeates through the screams and spills outward. When this pain is not felt, it instead shifts to hostility and unforgiveness, which in turn, hits just as hard. There is an isolation that grows from this track, brewing from processing feelings we could not begin to imagine, yet, its connection is second to none- and that is powerful. I feel I must also mention my love for the lyricism that becomes striking within songs like ‘Ghosts Of Tomorrow’. In an album that takes it back to basics, it is at times refreshing to find the extended beauty of narrative within a few offerings. 

‍Stay Relentless ends with ‘Leave You Behind’. Loud and powerful, Justice is back to what they do best, ravelling their angst up into a ball, casting it in iron, and throwing it into the crowd. It is a track that quite simply annihilates. Leaving their most ferocious roars and cataclysmic growls till the end, ‘Leave You Behind’ is one of those songs you feel lucky to have waited for. It’s a fruitful reward that not only delves into varying musical aspects explored within the album at hand, but dials up the drama and flair tenfold. The melodic backing vocals and swirling guitars are the cherry on top of this beautiful offering. 

‍Stay Relentless is an album not lost in the theatrics of it all. In a time where music almost requires an investigative journalism degree to decode, crack, and even listen to, Justice For The Damned have taken it back to basics. Yet, this journey of reconnection and finding their roots has only amplified their signature flair, articulating loudly and ferociously as to why it was this band’s very style that saw them succeed in the first place. As the tracks roll, so do the punches, seeing Stay Relentless become a personification of its very own call to arms. No matter what was thrown at them, this album is the notebook of a band that stuck by their own motto, now telling the tales like a prophecy. Through these 12 tracks, we as listeners become privy to just how high the stakes were, and continue to be, and for Justice For The Damned, it is a mentality that has become ingrained, filtering through their music as a violent weapon, but also a guiding hand.

Rating: 9/10
Stay Relentless is out now. Listen here
Review by Georgia Haskins @ghaskins2002