While two decades may be the lifespan of many bands, The Acacia Strain are showing no signs of slowing here on ‘Step Into The Light’. The far more expectant part of their double release when compared to the sludge monolith of ‘Failure Will Follow’, this is a 25 minute barrage of violent, visceral deathcore that has Acacia sounding just as hungry, just as dangerous, and just as excellent as you’d hope.

Speed is the name of the game on ‘Step Into The Light’, as evident in each of the three opening tracks clocking in at under two minutes apiece. ‘Flourishing’ is a rough-around-the-edges thrill ride that hears vocalist Ethan Bennett sound more pissed off and urgent than we’ve heard him in a hot minute. ‘Calf’s Blood’ is just as explosive, with the whole band’s bloodlust thrust into the spotlight, while ‘Chain’ features Chamber vocalist Jacob Lilly to inexplicably dial up the intensity further. All told, these three songs barely last five minutes but the damage is doled out quickly. You feel every crunching guitar, every tsunami of drums, every monolithic bass line in the very pit of your being.

The tracks open up a bit more from that point, with ‘Fresh Bones’ coming in at a leisurely two minutes and 29 seconds, but they’re not taking their foot off the gas. Instead, the attack is just as brutal and more sustained – they’ve tasted blood and they want the whole meal now. This leads into a pair of highlights at the heart of this record in ‘Teeth Of The Cursed Dog’ and ‘Open Wound’. Quintessential cuts from the pantheon of The Acacia Strain’s tried-and-tested heaviness, they are utterly engrossing and irresistible in how they pummel, pound and pulverise everything in sight.

‘Sinkhole’ calls upon Sunami’s Josef Alfonso to help dish out the aural terror over four punishing minutes that lean much more heavily into the ‘-core’ part of their deathcore tag, while closer ‘None Of Us Asked To Be Here’ hints at what darkness lies within ‘Failure Will Follow’, teeming as it is with doom and sludge.

It’d be easy to point to ‘Step Into The Light’ as simply being what we’ve come to expect from The Acacia Strain. While yes, it is a continuation of everything they’ve mastered over their past 10 albums, this is them at the top of their game. They apply their experience to cut deep and true – they don’t just grab a knife and slice at you, they hold that blade over the flame so that it glides through flesh with no effort at all. They are masters of their craft that the scene cannot get enough of and when it seems that bands of their age are taking new lanes into softer directions, The Acacia Strain feels like one of the last bastions of brutality, an evergreen monument to the pit.

‘Step Into The Light’ is a superb release that nails The Acacia Strain’s reputation as one of deathcore’s most vital proponents. The content may not hold many surprises but what is a surprise is how they’re able to take everything you know and love of this band and take it to a new, unimaginable level.

JACK TERRY

But the difference is that the surprise second album ‘Failure Will Follow’ – announced a month after the first – is The Acacia Strain as we’ve never heard them before. Three tracks of sludgey, doomy, evil noise that goes ridiculously hard and adds a rotten feather to their grotesque caps.

Where the companion album ‘Step Into The Light‘ is a brisk and bruising whirlwind of blast beats and barks, ‘Failure Will Follow’ is a lot more precise and deliberate, taking its time to mete out its venomous verses in excruciating detail. Opener ‘Pillar Of Salt’ is a 10-plus minute test of endurance that utilises vocalist Vincent Bennett’s bone crumbling guttural roars to terrifying effect, as well as inviting Full Of Hell’s Dylan Walker to contribute his own vitriolic outbursts and iRis.EXE to lend some light to the darkness, her glistening vocals floating above the maelstrom like an out of body experience.

‘Bog Walker’ is the centrepiece to ‘Failure Will Follow’, clocking in at over 17 minutes, the first three of which it spends recycling the same fuzzed out riff that would sound at home on an Electric Wizard album. In fact, so long is the opening, that you could have listened to two tracks from ‘Step Into The Light’ and be halfway done with a third and that’s all before another member of the band joins this rumbling ramp up. When apocalyptic drums, eruptive bass and beefy vocals do eventually join the fray, the result is cataclysmic, the shockwaves carrying this track emphatically onward. Like a journey down the River Styx through the Seven Circles, ‘Bog Walker’ offers passage after passage of cascading riffs and neck snapping volatility.

The sad truth with this double release is that fans will inevitably pick their favourite and cast the other out as a ‘nice to have’ side dish. Sadder still is that established fans might – understandably –  stick with the sound they know best from the band and put ‘Step Into The Light’ on the pedestal over its sludgier twin. But while ‘Failure Will Follow’ seems like a new sound on the surface, all the clues have been there in their output for the best part of a decade. Doom influences have littered the likes of 2017’s ‘Gravebloom’ and 2019’s ‘It Comes In Waves’. They even recently toured the US with Full Of Hell and Primitive Man. They’re comfortable in this dank wheelhouse.

Closing with ‘Basin Of Vows’, The Acacia Strain prove this extensively. The friends they’ve accrued in high places are a big help and they call upon that support network again with Primitive Man’s Ethan McCarthy stepping in to trade lines with Bennett. Their back and forth is nothing short of enthralling, a violent tennis match between two heavyweights that ought to be savoured as much as it should be feared. Featuring more clean passages before a final section that may be Acacia’s heaviest moments to date, they make sure you’ll continue to feel ‘Failure Will Follow’ long after the closing moments ring out.

‘Failure Will Follow’ is The Acacia Strain as you’ve never heard them before – at least not to this extent. But based on the strength of this offering, we hope it’s not long before we hear them plumb such depths again. Still just as heavy but in a whole new way, The Acacia Strain may be 20 years deep in this, but Failure Will Follow feels like we’ve still only seen the tip of the iceberg.

JACK TERRY

Nowadays, the genre as a whole seems to have gotten a lot heavier, and flying the flag for the UK in the brutal stakes is Leeds-based five-piece Veiled, who are set to release their debut EP ‘The Black Rite’ this week. Formerly known as ISOLATE, the band donned their new name and released a pair of standalone singles last year, generating a healthy dose of buzz about them; their razor sharp brutality threatening to pounce from the shadows of their viral contemporaries and add to the melee with furious intent. 

‘The Black Rite’ opens with dramatic, gothic pianos on ‘The Discovering’. Pounding drums join the fray and it all builds to an explosion of malicious metalcore; writhing tendrils of jagged guitars, throat-shredding vocals and ballistic blast beats decimate the landscape, before a pit call of “Come. With. Us.” truly lays waste to the surveyable surroundings like a nuke has detonated in your earphones.

‘Recusant’ follows with down-tuned, crunching riffs before trying to take flight with a big chorus, but between the dual-aspect vocals, the frenetic guitar work and generally trying to have too much of an impact, the wheels feel like they start to fall off a little bit. ‘Confession’ continues a similar pattern that has the powerful vocals feeling like a chore at times, even if the swirling maelstrom of brutal metalcore and orchestral accents has flashes of genuine brilliance.

Lead single ‘Relinquished’ nails the formula more cohesively though and stands head and shoulders above the rest of this EP as the highlight. Featuring Kyle Lamb of She Must Burn, the track is a compact juggernaut, doling out punishing sounds in a shade under three minutes. The restless assault of the verses is as crushing as it deserves to be, and the soaring choruses give fans something to really get hold of. If we’re splitting hairs, the lyricism is perhaps a bit light-touch, a bit like we have heard this sentiment of ‘kill me so I’m free of this world’ one too many times before, but musically and performatively, it’s sound.

In the end though, ‘The Black Rite’ feels like an EP that has come a touch too late. Fine on its own but a minnow compared to their peers in both scope and content, Veiled has produced an EP that draws together components we have heard a thousand times and doesn’t add a whole lot to it, nor does it go extreme enough so as to stay in line with some of the genre’s brightest sparks. That being said, Veiled has laid an intriguing foundation. The cement is down and the blueprints are drawn up, but as to what will actually be built, we just have to wait and see.

JACK TERRY

Covet wastes no time in diving head first into the first of those figures, as ‘Coronal’ opens with lilting melodies and an earworm riff that is drowning in Young’s preferred effects pedals. It also includes vocals which are something of a rarity in the band’s work to date, but unlike the soft and soothing ‘Parachute’ from 2020’s splendid ‘Technicolor’, here they are so thick with vocoder that the track feels grimier and dirgier for it. But Young’s fretwork is what we all came here for, and it does not disappoint, practically acting like a second voice throughout with deft runs and soaring solos adding to the polyrhythms and intricacies of the song.

‘Firebird’ was inspired by Young’s mother owning a Pontiac when she moved to the United States from her native China, and the song perfectly embodies the feeling of driving down the California coast with the top down, the summer breeze in your hair and your cares and troubles left in the dust. It’s the sound of hazy days spent with friends and loved ones, the sparkling guitar lines wrap you up in a warm embrace and, unlike some of Covet’s contemporaries, it feels light and airy, rather than bogged down in showing off technical prowess. 

Throughout their history, Covet’s lineup has chopped and changed, and this time around, Young is joined by bassist Brandon Dove and drummer Jessica Burdeaux. While they take a comparative backseat in the grand scheme of ‘Catharsis’, their input cannot be overlooked. Burdeaux’s drumming works overtime in embedding a sense of linear progression to the chaos amidst the polyrhythmic star of the show, and Dove’s bass cuts through just enough so as to be a calming, comforting presence despite the twists and turns Young’s guitar work takes.

‘Interlude’ has Young returning to her piano-based roots and folds her proficiency with the violin into the mix as well. Her musicality has always been apparent, but to hear it across multiple instruments in these stirring few minutes adds a whole new sense of wonder and intrigue. ‘Catharsis’ is an album that evokes everybody from Polyphia and CHON to Pijn and Latitudes.

With just eight songs and running to around the half-hour mark, its cool nature means that this album breezes by. This feels like a decent length for the work, which could easily begin to sound too familiar should it go on any longer. As it is though, Young has used her pedals, effects and tricks strategically well so as to ensure each track feels connected but separate; like they really are individual characters of the same universe. For example, the 80s-tinged ‘Bronco’ and the harder-nosed ‘Smolder’ bear subtle similarities to one another despite their considerable ostensible differences.

Overall, ‘Catharsis’ is a gorgeous new entry into the mind blowing pool of content Young has to flaunt. The work here is as impressive as we’ve come to expect and is steeped in an emotional intelligence that moves you. While bands like Covet are often accused of existing only to impress you rather than leave a lasting impression, there is heart and love aplenty here. Young is truly one of the greats.

JACK TERRY

When he announced the album at the start of the year, he said, “It’s about digging deep down into yourself and attempting to unearth hope and light in the things that can comfort you through those times.” As a result, ‘The Love Still Held Me Near’ hears Green question and confront his beliefs; opening song and lead single ‘Meant To Be’ references this almost instantly. “The last thing on my mind was my faith,” he sings in a song about the death of his long-time producer and engineer Karl Bareham. But throughout the album, Green reveals that he does still think that he can heal, and his defiance in the face of personal adversity comes to a head on album closer ‘Begin Again’. The album is a story of philosophical and therapeutic means – his own personal journey through grief being the very thing that helped him to heal – which is a lesson he now shares with us, like his very heart laid bare for all to see.

With such a raw spine to ‘The Love Still Held Me Near’, City And Colour has adopted a new no-holds-barred approach, which is best demonstrated by ‘Fucked It Up’. As well as being painfully honest and incredibly open, the song is one of the noisiest Green has recorded away from Alexisonfire. Fingers sliding on strings, hands on guitar necks and vocals higher in the mix than ever before, this comes pretty close to sounding like a live performance. Those blemishes and realities only add to the transparency and humility that this record is teeming with, making it feel more human, more relatable and more alive.

The production value of ‘The Love Still Held Me Near’ has also seen a big step up. Whereas older works like ‘Bring Me Your Love’ and ‘Sometimes’ sounded fuzzy or faded, this is a rich and vibrant album that sounds full-bodied at every turn. Whether it’s the big choruses of ‘Hard, Hard Time’ or the softer, more delicate moments of ‘Things We Choose To Care About’, the tone is like a warm embrace, the resonance wrapping around you as if you’re in the room with Green and his ever revolving band – this time comprising guitarist John Sponarski, bassist Erik Nielsen and drummer Leon Power.

‘Bow Down To Love’ acts as the album’s centre-piece, both in scope and quality. At over six minutes, it’s the longest track on the record and serves as a rallying cry for love, tolerance and equality. “If I could gather up all the hate / light a match and burn it all away / then with compassion in my voice / I would sing this song and hope that we might find a better way” are the words of a man sick of the torrid world around him, and a sentiment that most people will welcome and adopt. Green’s voice soars with intense passion and crackles with disdainful sadness in equal measure, highlighting the power and captivating timbre of his unmistakable vocals. It’s a glorious, moving number that ends in a breath-taking, wailed crescendo and is a sublime exercise in song building from a true modern master of the craft.

They say “write what you know” and if this is the result of knowing heartbreak and devastation, then it’s very sound advice indeed. ‘The Love Still Held Me Near’ proves once again what a crucial and complete singer-songwriter Dallas Green is. By far his most raw and vulnerable work to date, it also stands to be City And Colour’s most powerful and impressive, too. 

JACK TERRY

Now, with ‘The Burden Ov Faith’, Hoover continues his career-long quest to bring down religion as a whole and delivers a demonic sermon with the ominous intensity of a blazing church. ‘Stained In Rot’ lays the band’s intentions bare – a speeding cavalcade of influence, encompassing guttural lows, piercing highs and soaring cleans over a bed of metalcore, d-beat, black metal and melodic death metal instrumentation. It’s a restless and daunting opening that elicits plenty of stank faces and the final breakdown is chest-crushingly breathtaking.

‘Death Ov Circumstance’ meanwhile concerns itself with taking down religious leaders, making Hoover’s anti-religion stance painfully clear. “They’re thought to serve the higher / But all they care for is themselves / Narcissistic prophet / Hellbent on torturous obedience” doesn’t leave much room for interpretation, and his venomous delivery is deeply affecting whatever your personal viewpoint. 

Of course, anti-religion in heavy music is nothing new. From the black metal church burnings that swept Norway in the early 90s, to the likes of Belphegor and Goatwhore relying heavily on godless messaging and all things evil, it’s been a prevalent inspiration for many members of metal’s more extreme reaches – hell, Deicide literally just put out an album called ‘Bible Bashers’, for god’s sake. Hoover’s personal experience though is what really propels ‘The Burden Ov Faith”s content, and tracks like ‘Earthen’ are heaving with the emotion and trauma that can only be informed by reality. In this instance, it’s the loss of his 16-year-old nephew to cancer; “what kind of God would test a child?” the lyrics ask pleadingly, incredulously. 

While Ov Sulfur’s sonic weapon of choice sits firmly in the brutal and bruising camp, Hoover’s vocal flexibility takes the content to another level. He has always been talented – he had the chops to perform vocals at Mitch Lucker’s memorial concert and has kept pace with some of the scene’s most trailblazing voices – but his performance across these 10 tracks is another massive step up.

It may also be the reason why they’ve managed to furnish this debut studio album with some seriously impressive guest features, too. Slaughter To Prevail’s Alex Terrible concludes ‘Befouler’ with the apocalyptic vocals that have become the masked madman’s trademark. Later on, they enlist the unmistakable services of Howard Jones (Light The Torch, ex-Killswitch Engage) to elevate ‘Wide Open’ to new epic realms. Additional features from the likes of Taylor Barber (Left To Suffer), Kyle Medina (Bodysnatcher) and Lindsay Schoolcraft (ex-Cradle Of Filth) are testament to Ov Sulfur’s already-impressive reputation.

When ‘The Burden Ov Faith’ works, it really works. And that’s precisely the issue with this album, because when it misses the mark, there is a clear gulf between each end of the scale. ‘The Inglorious Archetype’ is one such shortfall: trying to squeeze as much into the track as possible, it ends up feeling like a shopping list of ideas that were started but never finished and hastily stapled together. Or the ‘A Path To Salvation’ interlude leading into ‘I Apostate’ which just grinds everything to a halt and makes the middle of the album clunky and unwieldy. If the highlights are an easy jaunt down the River Styx, these tracks are the boat capsizing and drowning you.

At a time when it seems as if every deathcore band in existence is trying to one-up each other (thank you, Will Ramos) Ov Sulfur is another worthy player entering the game. Their heft is undeniable and when it’s focused, it is staggering to behold. When it doesn’t though, it gets gimmicky. Nevertheless, ‘The Burden Ov Faith’ offers up some essential listening for fans of blackened deathcore. Here’s to hoping they stick around and continue to build.

JACK TERRY

‘Eyes Of God Look Down Upon Me’ was released as the lead single and for good reason; a sustained barrage of blast beats and head splitting riffs is delivered with searing intensity and reveals a band filled with bloodlust. The guitars of Jude Bennett and Zack Scott cleave a gnarled scar through the landscape and drummer Niall Ali delivers a restless masterclass in rapid fire brutality and slow, deliberate annihilation in perfect measure. The final payoff is utterly apocalyptic, with vocalist Jasper Harmer dishing out his most demonic roars and the breakdown is excruciating in its heaviness, calling to mind the likes of Black Tongue’s ‘Fauxhammer’.

The EP itself opens with ‘Warmth Of The Empty Light’, delivering a solid minute of wretched atmosphere designed to fray your nerves. High-pitched drones and unintelligible whispers litter a bed of static fuzz that unexpectedly changes volume, before it all drops out, leaving one unknown voice to croak the fearful words “…and beg to die.” Of course, Beyond Extinction now have their listeners right where they want them and go for the jugular with the instant devastation of ‘The Subjugator’. On just their second EP, the band still needs to fully grab the scene’s attention, and with their animalistic savagery on display here, they should do so in no time at all.

Already, the quartet have displayed terrifying heft and a prowess for shaking your blood. In an age when extreme metal bands seem to be continually trying to one-up each other, it can at times come off as gimmicky, but that’s not the case here. ‘Gravedigger’ stands out as a key highlight to this point; chain sawing guitars and a thunderous rhythm section feel like a sledgehammer to the skull, underpinning lyrics like “my power knows no bounds, no one knows the wrath of my fury”. A chilling ‘ting’ preceding an apocalyptic breakdown is another in a list of tried and tested tools of the trade that they use to stunning effect. Beyond Extinction’s mission statement is clear; they will deconstruct everything you know and love on a subatomic level and you will bear witness to it all.

Beyond Extinction have clearly been taking notes of the scene and their influences. In under 22 minutes, they have distilled everything we know and love about down-tuned deathcore and played it back with embellishments and accents that elevate the craft beyond what some of their most celebrated contemporaries are doing. With ‘Nothing More Wretched’, it would appear that the student is on the fast track to becoming the master.

JACK TERRY