ALBUM REVIEW: Step Into The Light/Failure Will Follow – The Acacia Strain
It’s finally happened. After years of stolen glances and late-night text messaging, the sexual tension between THE ACACIA STRAIN and sludge metal has reached breaking point. The teasing “will they, won’t they” saga has ended and they’ve rushed to embrace one another as a gentle summer rain falls and the onlooking members of UNEARTH squeal with delight. With new album Failure Will Follow, Vincent Bennett and his melancholy men can stand proud and open about their intents. THE ACACIA STRAIN are a sludge band now.
Well, sort of. Failure Will Follow is thicker and grimmer than finding a corpse while wading through molasses, but it’s not their only new release. Its sister album Step Into The Light is out on the same day and is closer to their established sound. Where Failure is slow and precise, Light is fast and violent, lashing out in all directions. Consequently, they wind up a bit like identical twins with completely different personalities. They’ve recognisably been created as a pair, but each has a distinguishing vibe.
This is a risky approach; there are going to be a few people who discard one record in favour of the other and there’s a real danger that one of them will slip into obscurity. However, these two halves are distinct enough though that THE ACACIA STRAIN may sidestep this possibility. Step Into The Light and Failure Will Follow are related, but this is not strictly a double album.
Failure Will Follow only has three tracks, but each of them exceeds ten minutes and they’re monstrously heavy. This is their grooviest, sludgiest record to date and the power of the stoned riff compels it. THE ACACIA STRAIN have flirted with lengthier tracks before – the closing track on Coma Witch for example – but this is the first time they’ve gone all out and made an entire album’s worth of treacle-thick metal. Their pessimistic lyrics and dense grooves work just as well in a stoner setting as they did in hardcore, and while Failure Will Follow will inevitably turn away a few fans, it’s a great example of how to switch genres without compromising creative vision.
The opening Pillar Of Salt has echoes of their hardcore past, but it’s got more in common with ELECTRIC WIZARD than HATEBREED. It repeats its main riff for just the right amount of time before the rhythm section kicks in with suitably crushing force. If this were your introduction to THE ACACIA STRAIN, you’d swear blind they’d spent the past 20 years drinking Cornish real ale in pubs with Jus Osborn. Even to long-term listeners this will be jarring, but it must be said, they do it well.
The fantastically-titled Bog Walker follows and is a bit like watching a hulking, lichen-covered beast emerging from a swamp while dragging a coffin on a chain. For 17 slow-motion minutes, THE ACACIA STRAIN play with atmospherics and manage to make an epic track deeply involving. At one point it dissolves into nothing but a whispered voice; at others, it chugs like a nihilistic freight train, and it culminates in one of the darkest singalongs you’ll ever hear.
It’s only on the closing Basin Of Vows where you detect more than just glimpses of their hardcore background. There are a few classic beatdown sections in here, even if the sludge reigns supreme. It’s a gravel-throated, anguished crawl through hell, albeit with some subtle melodicism worked in. This is the fly-crusted icing on the rotten, foul-smelling cake of Failure Will Follow. This is likely to be the most divisive release they’ve ever put out, but if you’re prepared to be submerged in its stagnant depths, you’ll find plenty of rich pickings among the decay.
On the other side of the depressed, cider-drenched coin is Step Into The Light. The companion piece to Failure Will Follow is just as punishing, albeit in a different way. It’s not the bleary-eyed crunch of its sibling; it’s a crazed, spittle-flecked psychopath designed to trigger extreme pit violence. If all that talk of doom metal has you worried about their future direction, this will soothe those fears.
Step Into The Light is only half as long as Failure Will Follow but it also has three times as many songs. A big chunk of them run for less than two minutes and there are no discernible hooks to speak of. You could even claim these aren’t proper songs but rather short snippets of aural extremity intended to be as brief and nasty as possible. There are still a couple of those thick grooves, but they’re used to an entirely different effect. The first half of Flourishing is a calculated effort to increase tension before plunging into the maelstrom, while the breakdown that closes Fresh Bones is pure mosh fury.
The whole thing flashes by at lightning speed but is arguably the more intense experience. Is This Really Happening is a thuggish brute of a song with an absolutely slamming closing sequence, and Untended Graves would have MALEVOLENCE nodding in grim approval. The modus-operandi here is to get in, wreck everything and leave as quickly as possible. Bennett’s guttural screams and feral intensity are borderline inhuman, and it’s all horribly, beautifully unpleasant. This is hardcore at its ugliest and most deranged, mainstream acceptance be damned.
So, even if THE ACACIA STRAIN do a bang-up job as a sludge/doom act, they’re still hardcore lads at heart. It wouldn’t be surprising if the songs from Step Into The Light slot easily into their live setlists while Failure Will Follow is reserved for special occasions, but whichever you prefer, they sound as morose and pissed-off as they ever have. Hardcore and sludge have a rich history of crossing over, but THE ACACIA STRAIN have taken it to a misanthropic extreme.
Rating: 8/10
Step Into The Light and Failure Will Follow are set for release on May 12th via Rise Records.
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