Formed in 2001, The Acacia Strain first came to my attention with 2004's 3750. The band used three guitarists and came across like the veritable wall of sound and their brand of Floridan death metal meets hardcore meets vaguely Swedish sounding melodies sounded good before the 200 clones came into the picture. The follow up, The Dead Walk saw the band pretty much continuing in the same vein except that they got heavier, dropped the melodies and became a bit boring.

2008 sees The Acacia Strain release their fourth full length album and things have definitely taken a turn for the worse. Album opener Skynet has a chorus that sounds like it came off the last Lamb of God album and things start to get monotonous and repetitive by the time the third song, Dr. Doom is finished. There’s plenty of the chugging staccato riffing that’s become the order of the day for so many bands and the music on the whole sounds like the last Lamb of God album mixed with Pantera’s The Great Southern Trendkill.

Of course, the band no longer use three guitarists so now they’re just like any of the 200 clone bands mentioned earlier who multi track guitars in the studio. It still sounds heavy but then that’s the least of their problems. The biggest problem is a lack of quality songwriting. The songs just blur past you in a haze and when the At the Gates riff happens at the beginning of Cthulu which quickly changes into a Meshuggah circa Destroy Erase Improve riff, you know the band is trawling through the bottom of their creative barrel. The band should actually be paying Meshuggah some royalty for the use of their music on this song. This is outright stealing and nothing else.

As the album rolls along and one riff melds into the other till its all interchangeable heavy mush I get the feeling that this is basically The Great Southern Trendkill without the great songs. Now, that’s me and I happen to think The Great Southern Trendkill is Pantera’s finest album but if you’re one of those loonies that think TGST sucks ass then god help you with Continent.



Label - Prosthetic
Year of Release - 2008