BAND SHARES TWO PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED SONGS — LISTEN
THE ACACIA STRAIN — Vincent Bennett [vocals], Kevin Boutot [drums], Devin Shidaker [guitar], Griffin Landa [bass], and Tom “The Hammer” Smith, Jr. [guitar] — have released heir eighth full-length album Slow Decaytoday via Rise Records. It includes all the songs in the seven inch and digital single drops that were released between February 28 and June 12, as well as two previously unreleased tracks. The full track listing is below.
The Acacia Strain have shared the two additional and previously unreleased songs — “Crippling Poison” and “Birds of Paradise, Birds of Prey” — for your listening pleasure.
Stream them here.
“We have reached the end, the totality of it all: Slow Decay,” says Bennett. “The journey may be over, but the memory will last a lifetime. Listen to everything as one — completed but never really complete. We understand this has been a lot for all of you, but we hope we sparked a little joy in all this despair. We hope we gave you something to look forward to. Never stop having things to hope for or to anticipate. Two more songs — just in case you needed one more push in the right direction. Listen with happiness, and never forget that the ride is just as fun as the destination. Thank you all.”
Slow Decay is a beast of a record that has been universally acclaimed by the press.
Brooklyn Vegan called the release “a hefty dose of dark, gloomy metalcore,” while Revolver proclaimed that “hell has rarely sounded so good.” MetalSucks said these songs are “dynamite reminders of why The Acacia Strain are so great,” while Metal Injection declared “What a great time to be alive” in reference to the new TAS album.
The music and the rollout itself adhered to the band’s very specific vision. “The whole concept is reality breaking down around us,” says Bennett about the album. “We’ve done our time on earth, broken through the boundaries of what reality actually is, and we’re now witnessing our collective descent into madness. Lyrically and sonically, everything reflects that. You’re getting the vision piece by piece. The whole theme is a slow dive. By the same token, it organically becomes one record instead of just one big push out of the gate. As soon as you think you’re getting the hang of it, we throw out a wrench with the full-length. There’s no evidence to suggest we’re aren’t actually in a living hell. The things happening around us could be out of a comic book or a movie. The idea is, ‘This can’t be real.’ Maybe something happened. Maybe we’re all dead and we don’t even know it. Maybe we’re just living in some augmented reality hellscape of actual planet earth.”
SLOW DECAY TRACK LISTING:
“Feed A Pigeon Breed A Rat”
“Crippling Poison”*
“Seeing God” (Feat. Aaron Heard)
“Solace and Serenity”
“The Lucid Dream” (Feat. Jess Nyx)
“I breathed in the smoke deeply it tasted like death and I smiled” (Feat. Zach Hatfield)
“Crossgates”
“Inverted Person”
“Chhinnamasta”
“One Thousand Painful Stings” (Feat. Courtney LaPlante)
“Birds of Paradise, Birds of Prey”*
“EARTH WILL BECOME DEATH”
*Previously unreleased
