You Are Safe From God Here

After exploring doomsday scenarios on past albums, shape-shifting metalcore heavyweights The Acacia Strain offer a vision of a distant future in an alternate reality. *You Are Safe From God Here* imagines a timeline in which humanity tries to escape the wrath of an omnipresent being run amok. The Acacia Strain vocalist Vincent Bennett calls it the “existential dark low fantasy era” of the band, which plays out in dual meanings across the songs. Bookend tracks “eucharist i: BURNT OFFERING” and “eucharist ii: BLOOD LOSS” provide a snapshot of the stark musical contrasts that permeate the album; the former short, fast, and brutal, the latter long, crushing, and featuring a mournful guest shot from Sunny Faris of all-female psych-rock troupe Blackwater Holylight.

For the longest time, THE ACACIA STRAIN were the absolute best at what they did. Ostensibly part of deathcore's early evolution, these Massachusetts marauders stood measurably apart from the rest of the nascent scene, dropping albums like 2006's seminal "The Dead Walk" and its monstrous follow-up "C...

A review of You Are Safe From God Here by The Acacia Strain, available October 24th worldwide via Rise Records.