FILE UNDER: A SLOW DEATH(CORE)

THE ACACIA STRAIN
Wormwood (Prosthetic)

The Acacia Strain are in no hurry. The songs on their fifth album, Wormwood, aim for the groove of Pantera, but slowed down to Crowbar speed; the band play an ugly, crawling style of deathcore, with some of the most creepily misanthropic lyrics in all of extreme music. Vincent Bennett’s delivery makes lines like “Your blood will blanket the earth/I am the shot heard ’round the world,” weirdly believable, not just more of the hyperbolic hostility metal bands have been trafficking in since the ’80s. The music isn’t all it could be, though; the songs feel longer than they actually are, and digital production trickery does little to make them exciting. The closing instrumental “Tactical Nuke” is so downtuned and dragging it sounds like it’s playing at the wrong speed, something which should be impossible on a digital device.

[From AltPress.com.]