The Acacia Strain have certainly undergone an interesting evolution in sound. While the long-running metal band have never released an outright bad album, it had been a while since The Acacia Strain reinvented their formula – at least until 2019’s It Comes In Waves dropped. One of the best albums in the band’s catalogue to date, the band explored sludgy, almost post-metal and Neurosis influences to very good results. It seems this album was only a prelude, though, especially considering the band has steadily released new songs throughout the first half of 2020. Now, it appears it’ll be culminating in a new album for the band, as they’re starting to hit another creative peak. The band’s new 2-song EP Y, out today, also features Spiritbox vocalist Courtney LaPlante on “One Thousand Painful Stings”.
THE ACACIA STRAIN has also confirmed that its eighth full-length album, “Slow Decay”, will arrive on July 24 via Rise Records. It will include all the songs in the seven inch and digital single drops that were released between February 28 and June 12, as well as two previously unreleased tracks. The full track listing is below.
The music and the rollout itself adhere to the band’s very specific vision.
“The whole concept is reality breaking down around us,” says Bennett about the album. “We’ve done our time on earth, broken through the boundaries of what reality actually is, and we’re now witnessing our collective descent into madness. Lyrically and sonically, everything reflects that. You’re getting the vision piece by piece. The whole theme is a slow dive. By the same token, it organically becomes one record instead of just one big push out of the gate. As soon as you think you’re getting the hang of it, we throw out a wrench with the full-length. There’s no evidence to suggest we’re aren’t actually in a living hell. The things happening around us could be out of a comic book or a movie. The idea is, ‘This can’t be real.’ Maybe something happened. Maybe we’re all dead and we don’t even know it. Maybe we’re just living in some augmented reality hellscape of actual planet earth.”
Slow Decay tracklisting:
1. Feed A Pigeon Breed A Rat
2. Crippling Poison
3. Seeing God (feat. Aaron Heard)
4. Solace and Serenity
5. The Lucid Dream (feat. Jess Nyx)
6. I breathed in the smoke deeply it tasted like death and I smiled (feat. Zach Hatfield)
7. Crossgates
1. Inverted Person
2. Chhinnamasta
3. One Thousand Painful Stings (feat. Courtney LaPlante)
4. Birds of Paradise, Birds of Prey
5. Earth Will Become Death
