{"id":246121,"date":"2025-10-28T17:59:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T17:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/246121\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T17:59:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T17:59:08","slug":"the-acacia-strain-you-are-safe-from-god-here-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/246121\/","title":{"rendered":"The Acacia Strain – You Are Safe From God Here Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I can pinpoint the moment The Acacia Strain went from the poor man\u2019s Meshuggah to \u201cexistential\u201d deathcore \u2013 seemingly without changing much. It all occurred with 2014\u2019s 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 \u2013 \u201cObserver\u201d showed an ambitious, albeit imperfect, twenty-seven-minute track full of the band\u2019s signature breakdowns and misanthropy \u2013 but put together with a distinctive ambiance and strong transitions. The Acacia Strain\u2019s songwriting chops would then be put to the test in 2019\u2019s experimental flirtation with post-metal and doom It Comes in Waves, and fully realized with 2023\u2019s suite Step Into the Light and Failure Will Follow.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Slow Decay \u2013 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\u2019s husky roars and Matt Guglielmo\u2019s rabid percussion \u2013 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 \u201cGod\u201d has more than just religious connotations: basically, anything that rules a listener\u2019s 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\u2019s brevity and Failure Will Follow\u2019s ambition \u2013 weaponized to be Slow Decay\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

While the one- to three-minute bruisers populate the track list, closer \u201cEucharist II: Blood Loss\u201d feels like an adherent of the band\u2019s 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\u2019s thirty-three minute runtime. Featuring vocalist Sunny Faris of hard rock\/doom outfit Blackwater Holylight, it wavers between mountainous riffs and Bennett\u2019s commanding roars and ambient placidity and Faris\u2019 vulnerable croons (not unlike iRis.EXE\u2019s performance in \u201cPillar of Salt\u201d). A highlight of dynamic songwriting, it nonetheless suffers from the thorn in The Acacia Strain\u2019s side: production. While the rest of the tracks are so swallowed in downtuned ridiculousness (positive), the negative spaces of \u201cBlood Loss\u201d highlight the snare\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 driven by Bennett\u2019s 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 (\u201cThe Machine that Bleeds,\u201d \u201cA Call Beyond,\u201d \u201cAeonian Wrath\u201d), the sludge-steeped tonal seepage allows down-tuned reveling (\u201cAcolyte of the One,\u201d \u201cSacred Relic\u201d), but the groove-infected tracks prove to be the real winners (\u201cMourning Star,\u201d \u201cHoly Moonlight,\u201d \u201cWorld Gone Cold\u201d), 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.<\/p>\n

On almost every level, You Are Safe From God Here is The Acacia Strain\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

\ufeff<\/p>\n

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

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I can pinpoint the moment The Acacia Strain went from the poor man\u2019s Meshuggah to \u201cexistential\u201d deathcore \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[975,25316,10734,115385,49,48,99681,25321,75,115386,2526,115387,115388,341,91575,208,209,115389,52834,107781,115390,115391],"class_list":["post-246121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-975","tag-3-5","tag-american-metal","tag-blackwater-holylight","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-deathcore","tag-doom-metal","tag-entertainment","tag-gods-hate","tag-hardcore","tag-iris-exe","tag-meshuggah","tag-music","tag-oct25","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-rise-records","tag-sludge-metal","tag-the-acacia-strain","tag-twitching-tongues","tag-you-are-safe-from-god-here"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}