The Acacia Strain Albums (4)
What The Critics Say
2008's Continent album finds the Acacia Strain pruned down from their original sextet lineup into a tidy foursome, and the diet hasn't necessarily drained them of their characteristic, blunt sonic force, but honed and compacted it into a dense and seemingly impervious deathcore wrecking ball, if you will. Problem is, you can usually see the wrecking ball coming from a mile away, since the group seems more addicted than ever to deliberate tempos, reigned back by tight-fisted riffs, and bowel-wrenching growls from vocalist Vincent Bennett which rarely fluctuate from their inexorable emotional flat-line. What few unexpected adornments are added to the music in time -- be they tenuous harmonies buzzing around cuts like "Forget-Me-Now" and "JFC," or speedier thrash riffs shaking up others like "Seaward" and "Cthulu" -- still wind up looking like mere pimples on a rhino: there's just too little variety to go 'round. If anything, endless grinds like "Skynet," "Balboa Towers," and "The Combine" sound like Crowbar for the hardcore set and seem tailor-made for herds of muscle-bound meatheads who like to patrol mosh pits just to intimidate slam-dancing kiddies. No fun. What's more, some of the breakdowns, wailing pinch-harmonics, and certainly the song "Dr. Doom" in its entirety, reveal a blatant compositional debt to Pantera that quickly becomes impossible to ignore. By the time the group unveils their largely abandoned melodic gifts on the closing anomaly, "The Behemoth," the damage has been done, and there's little chance of resuscitating the Acacia Strain's bruised and bludgeoned body from its comatose state. Maybe next time... ~ Eduardo Rivadavia, All Music Guide
'...And Life Is Very Long'
Release Date 4/12/2007
Tracks 10
Label Devils Head Records
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
The Acacia Strain want to be the penultimate hard rock/post-grunge/doom/speed/death/black/metalcore band, and their sophomore release and debut for Razor & Tie does an awfully good job at taking the bull by the horns. The Dead Walk takes the redundancy of the metalcore scene to task by utilizing the heavy riffing of "Creeping Death"-era Metallica, the industrial cacophony of "Broken"-era Nine Inch Nails, and the malevolent fury of Cannibal Corpse (without the attention-grabbing song titles) and fusing them into a blistering juggernaut of sound that is as relentless as it is reliably electrifying. Deep, serpentine guitar licks appear out of nowhere, drum fills jump out and grab you when you least expect them, and lead singer Vincent Bennett delivers the contents of his stomach at an almost inhuman rate throughout the short 30-odd minutes of mayhem -- at 3:47, the thunderous title track seems downright epic. The Acacia Strain may lack subtlety -- "4X4" begins with the lyric "If I were you I'd pack my bags and get the fuck out of Dodge" -- but so does heavy metal and all of its naughty little subgenres. Play loud. ~ James Christopher Monger, All Music Guide
