Review Summary: Thunder shakes the sky.
Not too long ago, The Acacia Strain was a punchline. They grew through their unique brand of deathcore that pulled heavily from beatdown hardcore and mostly featured open chugs played at the pace of a snail, with massive breakdowns, two-steps and callouts galore. You either got the vibe or you didn’t. It was fun but simplistic music that had its fans and I was one of them. However, many of these choices were the butt of countless jokes in the metal community and the band was lumped in with the likes of Emmure as a punching bag. They never set out to please critics and are satisfied with making what they truly wanted to make, but that doesn’t mean they kept making the same album.
The band has slowly but steadily evolved since releasing the defining record of their early downtempo sound,
Wormwood in 2010. It’s simple, it’s mean, it’s hard hitting and makes you want to throw down in the pit. The closer, “Tactical Nuke” was the first signal of things to come: an instrumental that is quite literally one open-string riff repeated slower and slower for five and a half minutes. It’s a droning, hypnotic trance that doesn’t sound far off from something Sunn O))) would make and it certainly turned some heads at the time, while probably leaving core-kids thinking it was some sort of practical joke.
Next up was the underappreciated
Death is the Only Mortal, which I like to describe as caveman Meshuggah with an absolutely gnarly, crunchy guitar tone. Everyone knows though that the real winds of change were of course with the TWENTY-SEVEN MINUTE closing behemoth “Observer” on
Coma Witch. It seemed like an actual practical joke, but to the shock of basically everyone, it was a remarkably well-crafted piece of doom/sludge metal that seamlessly wove in atmospheric ambient sections alongside their trademark core sound. The track is one of the most remarkable departures of sound I can ever recall and if an underground sludge band released it instead, it would be rightly thought of as a masterpiece. Even the haters and losers, of which there were many, had to begrudgingly tip their cap and take note of where the band might head. Further albums would take this premise and run with it: 2019’s
It Comes in Waves was a true turning point, a record that was primarily a sludge-y post-metal album. The dual releases
Failure Will Follow and
Step Into the Light then split the sound in two with the former delivering three doom tracks all over ten minutes, while the latter was nasty hardcore delivered through a sludge-core haze, clocking in at just twenty-three minutes. What was the next stage in their evolution?
You Are Safe From God Here feels like the final culmination of everything the band has been slowly building toward. The album is a perfect amalgamation of all of their influences throughout the years, forged into one cohesive package. At their core, The Acacia Strain is still the same as it ever was. All of their signature trademarks are present but are remixed with a renewed fervor and pushed to the extreme. There are many words that come to mind when I think of the album as a whole, but almost none are technical; it’s about how the album makes you feel on a primal level.
“Heavy” means a lot of things to different people but when I think of heavy in a sonic sense, this album is a perfect encapsulation of it. It’s ignorant and uncomplicated, yet executed with a strangely elegant precision. The suffocating, oppressive atmosphere hangs as thick as toxic smog. This is punishing, unforgiving music, an absolute beatdown delivered through gargantuan yet simple, earth-shattering chugs punctuated with rapid bursts of hardcore aggression. And it’s all wrapped up in two-minute blasts. Sludge and downtempo bands almost always prefer much longer compositions but Acacia makes sure they hit hard and don’t wear out their welcome, with the 11 tracks bleeding into each other over just 24 relentless minutes.
The riffs slowly churn like industrial-sized gears that rattle your bones. The callouts and breakdowns hit like sledgehammers on concrete. This is a credit to the excellent production, which thumps with the correct amount of fuzz and distortion to highlight the brutality, while giving a crisp pop to the drums that cut through the density. It is cavernous and enveloping in the best possible way. You truly feel surrounded. There is no better track that epitomizes this than “SACRED RELIC”. It kicks off in pure chaos, flashy drumming taking center stage alongside a few dissonant riffs and some high-pitched screams. This lasts for all of twenty seconds before screeching to a halt through haunting feedback. The next two minutes that follow are almost entirely a thudding, pulsating riff whose reverberating echoes could shake a packed football stadium. It all culminates in Vincent Bennett’s increasingly manic shrieks of “There is no God” repeated 14 times for emphasis that slowly fades to nothing. It is blunt, over the top maximalism in every aspect that fits like a glove by completely overwhelming your senses.
Bennett is one of the few extreme metal vocalists I can think of who have gotten considerably better with age. He used to stick almost entirely with his more hardcore-esque growl that some considered monotonous but has since expanded his arsenal of vocal weapons in a way that many don’t as they get older. He has such a unique quality to his voice. It's quite airy, with a certain cadence that is incredibly discernible. Now he feels fully unleashed, pushing his shouts down lower as well as reaching high screeches that I didn’t think he was capable of. There is no predictability whether he will shout, growl or unleash a barrage of higher wails, often oscillating between all of them in the same verse to create a delicious variety the band has never had. “I DON’T THINK YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE IT” is a perfect illustration with Bennett reaching into his bag for the deepest gutturals he has ever done alongside some gnarly throat-clearing highs. His misanthropic, nihilistic rage-fueled lyrics remain a trademark of the band and are as subtle as being hit in the face with a brick, which may be irritating in other contexts, but they fit the pounding riffs and dour atmosphere perfectly. There are so many direct phrases that you remember and want to shout along with, I’m sure they play killer in a live setting. Despite this brevity, he also weaves in colorful images and poetic wordplay to paint a fuller picture, “man is the splintered skeleton of a snake” and “the world is a worm-eaten corpse” are ones that stick out from “ACOLYTE OF ONE”. There’s something deeper lurking beneath the edgy anti-religious exterior. The Acacia Strain has been through a revolving door of members and while now long-time lead guitarist Devin Shidaker has undoubtedly helped push the band to new heights and influence their direction, it’s clear that Vincent, the only founding member left, is the ticking heartbeat and soul of the band.
Closing an album out with an abnormally large track after a bombardment of bite-sized ones is certainly a bold creative decision, one that isn’t new for the band as of course seen with “Observer” alongside the only relatively shorter “Cold Gloom” and “Names”. The Acacia Strain clearly loves the dichotomy it creates, but longer runtimes demand payoff. Failure Will Follow already proved they can fully plunge into doom and atmospheric sludge with fantastic results, showing they have the musical chops to hang with the more critically celebrated bands in that space.
You Are Safe From God Here keeps that momentum rolling with another 14 minute epic, “eucharist ii: BLOOD LOSS” which very well may be the best song they’ve ever written. The opening sets the stage through about a minute of a stoner riff drowning in fuzz and distortion. You are then greeted by Bennett at the most vicious and throat-shredding his highs have ever been, sounding completely unhinged rivaling the most biting screamo or black metal frontmen. He pushes himself so far that I was sort of surprised to learn it was him performing them and not another featured vocalist. The raw emotional extremity completely makes sense when you learn the song is about processing the grief of losing his beloved dog. It’s enough heartbreak to drive any person to their breaking point. A true, naked unbearing of the soul. The song picks up the pace with a bouncing riff pierced with a pinch harmonic before slowing down once again, leading into an achingly beautiful clean section with a melancholic chord progression accompanied by a softly ethereally sung feature from Sunny Faris of Blackwater Holylight. This is all in the span of about four minutes. The tight, intricate songwriting and transitions that snap into place are absolutely out of this world.
The song then builds the heaviness back with an atmospheric portion before it decides to smack you upside the head with a groovy, pounding riff that will be rattling around my skull for years to come. Another brief and sorrowful clean section follows with Faris again providing a fascinating musical juxtaposition of beauty in moments of tragedy. These moments only total about a minute and a half, yet they elevate the track to another level artistically. “eucharist ii: BLOOD LOSS” chugs to its conclusion with more monolithic doom riffs, before a longing guitar refrain begs for release as the song slowly fades to black. Take a bow.
How many bands can you recall that have peaked creatively and artistically nearly 20 years into their career? It’s a short list for any genre, much less metal/deathcore which tends to peak in youth and not age gracefully. That is what The Acacia Strain have done. They’ve stayed true to their roots while naturally expanding their sonic palate with different influences. I feel as if my musical taste has grown alongside the evolution of the band. The band and I have both grown more mature and adventurous over time, yet still retain a craving for the familiar. Their gradual transition into more sludge and doom-oriented music unfolded smoothly over the years, serving as a logical evolution from their downtempo beginnings. It’s a perfect way to satisfy old fans while bringing in brand new ones. Where can they even go from here? I have a funny feeling that they are just getting started.
