BLEEDER’S DIGEST: QUICKIE REVIEWS OF THE ACACIA STRAIN AND I DECLARE WAR

The Acacia Strain, Wormwood
The New England band’s latest collection of heartfelt ballads to punch your girlfriend in the face to, Wormwood reiterates The Acacia Strain’s deathcore dominance. Showcasing a truly noticeable progression in the group’s sound, these twelve tracks cover such edgy topics as religious cults (“Jonestown”), serial killers (“Ramirez”), and domestic terrorism (“Unabomber”), all set to a barbaric barrage of brutal breakdowns. “Nightman,” a surprisingly faithful cover from the classic It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia musical episode “The Nightman Cometh,” displays an intentional humor so rarely present in this scene that so frequently takes itself far too seriously. By keeping his lyrics intelligible and insightful on cuts like “BTM FDR,” vocalist Vincent Bennett excels where so many frontmen in deathcore fail:

We are the atomsmashers
We do what can’t be done
You are the baby killers
We will explode the sun

Sure, they’re no Emmure, but they’re still pretty great.

(4 out of 5 horns)

I Declare War, Malevolence
Though hardly the only culprits, this Seattle act make precisely the sort of deathcore that sets the embattled subgenre up for further harsh criticism from the rest of the metal scene. Groups like Job For A Cowboy and Suicide Silence have already helped to provide the general template for the current sound, and it’s really up to newer bands such as I Declare War to build on that foundation and push the sound forward. Unfortunately, there’s not even a glint of innovation evident throughout the roughly forty-minutes that comprises Malevolence. Maybe it’s a tad bit unfair to expect more from the band’s Artery Recordings debut, but with so many formulaic deathcore groups out there aping the more successful players, the burden is on I Declare War to distinguish themselves. Brutal as cuts like “Putrification Of The Population” and “New Age Holocaust” may be, there’s just not enough substance to recall after the record ends, and highlights are essentially nonexistent when every track sounds so much like the preceding one. Ultimately, Malevolence is just a caustic blur of bland triggered drums, predictable breakdowns, and dull death metal vocalizations.

(1 1/2 out of 5 horns)

-GS