I can pinpoint the moment The Acacia Strain went from the poor man’s Meshuggah to “existential” deathcore – seemingly without changing much. It all occurred with 2014’s Coma Witch, which as a whole, was that traditional hardcore-infused deathcore beatdown you would have expected from predecessors Wormwood or Continent. But then the closing track did something a little different – “Observer” showed an ambitious, albeit imperfect, twenty-seven-minute track full of the band’s signature breakdowns and misanthropy – but put together with a distinctive ambiance and strong transitions. The Acacia Strain’s songwriting chops would then be put to the test in 2019’s experimental flirtation with post-metal and doom It Comes in Waves, and fully realized with 2023’s suite Step Into the Light and Failure Will Follow.

You Are Safe From God Here has its moments of doom and post-metal atmosphere and songwriting, but it feels like the spiritual successor to 2020’s Slow Decay – colossal, dense, and pissed off. The Acacia Strain weaponizes doom and sludge in its devastating guitar tone that swallows listeners whole, guided by Vincent Bennett’s husky roars and Matt Guglielmo’s rabid percussion – all for the service of a more explicitly anti-religious stance. The album title and its tracks reflect this, although Bennett has stated that the idea of “God” has more than just religious connotations: basically, anything that rules a listener’s life, this album offers a safe place from it. In many ways, the album feels a bit like a fusion of Step Into the Light’s brevity and Failure Will Follow’s ambition – weaponized to be Slow Decay’s spiritual successor. You Are Safe From God Here is the hardcore/deathcore heavyweights continually firing on all cylinders, although The Acacia Strain remains hindered by a few habits.

While the one- to three-minute bruisers populate the track list, closer “Eucharist II: Blood Loss” feels like an adherent of the band’s long-form content. This proves to be the most ambitious and the most divisive moment of the album, its almost fourteen-minute length comprising a huge chunk of the album’s thirty-three minute runtime. Featuring vocalist Sunny Faris of hard rock/doom outfit Blackwater Holylight, it wavers between mountainous riffs and Bennett’s commanding roars and ambient placidity and Faris’ vulnerable croons (not unlike iRis.EXE’s performance in “Pillar of Salt”). A highlight of dynamic songwriting, it nonetheless suffers from the thorn in The Acacia Strain’s side: production. While the rest of the tracks are so swallowed in downtuned ridiculousness (positive), the negative spaces of “Blood Loss” highlight the snare’s glaringly compressed and synthetic tone, while the stunning lack of filth belies its dense guitars. A truly frustrating chink in the armor for The Acacia Strain, whose sound is constantly evolving yet is constantly let down by its sterile production.

Blessedly, the groovy short-form tracks that comprise the majority of the tracklist remain unfuckwithable. The Acacia Strain rides the line between speedy blastbeat-guided hardcore sprints and the down-tuned monolithic dirge bruising that have you wallowing in tonal abuse – driven by Bennett’s formidable vocal attack. Intentionality is the name of the game, mindless breakdowns and ominous tones anchored to a strong foundation of groove, feeling like organic progressions rather than the stereotyped beatdowns shoehorned into existential-core crises. The more hardcore-adjacent rippers offer momentum (“The Machine that Bleeds,” “A Call Beyond,” “Aeonian Wrath”), the sludge-steeped tonal seepage allows down-tuned reveling (“Acolyte of the One,” “Sacred Relic”), but the groove-infected tracks prove to be the real winners (“Mourning Star,” “Holy Moonlight,” “World Gone Cold”), balancing dynamic movement between swallowing sludge and raging hardcore fluidly. These tracks feel like an improvement from Step Into the Light in nearly every way: denser, faster, more haunting, and more pissed off.

On almost every level, You Are Safe From God Here is The Acacia Strain’s best album. Retaining that hugeness they are renowned and hated for in equal measure, while fusing its more experimental styles into a cohesive whole guided by a singular theme, the deathcore veterans show willingness to experiment without sacrificing their brand. However, the band’s contradicting proclamations of filth and sterile production do not do it any favors, declawing some of the more vicious numbers and dropping the facade for its more manufactured pieces – keeping the band from the greatness of which they are so capable. That being said, You Are Safe From God Here is a banger for the better.



Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: N/A | Format Reviewed: STREAM
Label: Rise Records
Websites: theacaciastrain.bandcamp.com | youaresafefromgodhere.com | facebook.com/Theacaciastrain
Releases Worldwide: October 24th, 2025

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