The Acacia Strain - Gravebloom



The band with some of the most consistently aesthetically appealing album covers continues to deliver some more consistently gutless and unexciting deathcore on Gravebloom. Vince Bennett has always had one of deathcore’s most one-dimensional and annoyingly hollow hardcore voices and has been the ball and chain that’s held The Acacia Strain back from potentially reaching the top tier of deathcore’s ranks. The band luckily continue to boast strong, eerie album openers, “Worthless” in this case setting a sinister mood for the spoken sample detailing a vague fatality of sorts that closes the song. But the band expends its novelty quickly and runs out of gas immediately after they arrive. The rest of the album is saturated with all-bark-no-bite deathcore bravado from Vince and any chemistry his bandmates seem to find is volatile and stifled by Vince’s stubborn foothold in his hardcore frontman box. The instrumentals are indeed of more creativity and generally a few shelves above the average deathcore band’s, (the unfortunately truncated creepiness of “Abysmal Depths” and the guitar harmony during the verses of “Model Citizen” further examples of this) and the intermittent proficient performances and compositions the band cough up are what keep The Acacia Strain’s head above water, where, unfortunately Vince is able keep shouting his edgy Vince-isms to pester anyone within hearing distance unable to zone him out.

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