Dr. Acula -
Slander
With a name as original as Dr. Acula you better hope one takes you too seriously. Starting bro parties since 07, these New York natives know one thing only and that’s having a good time. Filled to the brim with songs of f
ucking, recreational drug use and debauchery, their music has always been about as shallow as the puddle on the side of the road. On onto their fifth full length album, the bros of Acula come back with a new offering of riffs, electronic stutters and more chugging than a frat party and you know what? It doesn’t sound half as bad as one would’ve expected. Their debut Victory Records album,
Slander, sees the New York band finally taking a step towards the serious realm and wind up crafting their best album in the process. Sure, the ridiculous breakdowns and the ludicrously named song titles abound but Dr. Acula finally show some amount of maturity on
Slander, if only for a minute. The catchiness of the album is one of the highlights all throughout, opening the album off officially with “Fire Crotch” (clever, guys) you get a sleuth of cleverly crafted riffs and an interplay of two vocalists who complement each other surprisingly well: one showing a finesse for highs and another showing a finesse for scratchy yells. The fun continues on tracks like “Welcome to Camp Nightmare” and “Currently Sexting”, with the same amount of catchiness and seriousness that keeps the tempo high, all the while being fairly enjoyable to hear.
However, after this point is where the joke finally wears off. The album has one redeeming factor, even with the heightened level of seriousness, and that’s the catch factor. At about half way through the album, Dr. Acula essentially grounds their ‘progress’ to an unsurprising halt. This certainly isn’t surprising, as the album itself carries very little depth and substance, yet a lack of surprise doesn’t cover up the extreme redundancy of
Slander. So while the boys of Dr. Acula have done a stand-up job attempting the branch out their party roots, it only goes so far as a night out in the town before winding up hung-over, puking its guts out in the bathroom. A good and respectable try… for a band such as this.
