THE ACACIA STRAIN – YOU ARE SAFE FROM GOD HERE

(Andy Synn embraces both the horror, and the hope, of the new album from The Acacia Strain, out Friday)

From “high art” to “low art” (and I’m sure there’s at least a few people out there who would absolutely consider The Acacia Strain to be the latter, at best) the one thing which truly makes art… well… art, is the emotion and intention which goes into its creation.

And while this seems to confuse some people – especially those “death of the author” types, for whom the only important thing is their interpretation – to me it just makes sense that art is all about what you put into it… and not necessarily what others get out of it.

Which is why it was so interesting to me to read The Acacia Strain‘s long-time lyrical mouthpiece Vincent Bennett talk about how much more personal their new album was and how this is the first time that he’s truly worn his heart on his sleeve (or, more accurately, in his words).

Because at no point in their career have I felt that Bennett, or the band, have ever tried to hold themselves back or settle for simply going through the motions… their rage has always read as something raw and visceral and uncompromising in both intent and delivery.

But perhaps what he meant is that, despite describing You Are Safe From God Here as the band’s “dark fantasy era” (based on the perhaps-not-entirely-fantastical premise that the entity we call “god” is something to be feared and avoided at all costs), what he’s actually doing this time around is exploring the roots of this rage… the desperation, the desolation, and the despair which feeds it and fuels it, for better or worse.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you have to engage with the record on this level… after all, if there’s one “art” that The Acacia Strain have long since mastered it the art of the beating, and the gatling-gun blastbeats and gargantuan, sledgehammer guitars of tracks like “A Call Beyond”, “The Machine That Bleeds”, and “Aeonian Wrath” all explode from the speakers with the concussive force of a well-placed car bomb (deep cut reference there for the old-school fans) and display an almost Grindcore-like, all-killer-no-filler, mentality from the band.

But while it’s always tempting just to turn off your higher brain functions and react to an album like this on a purely physical level (and I wouldn’t blame you for that considering how utterly, ridiculously heavy it is) I’m here to tell you that there’s more going on beneath the surface than at first it may appear.

“I Don’t Think You Are Going To Make It”, for example, is not just one of the ugliest, nastiest songs on the album but it might just also be one of the darkest songs the group have ever written, both in terms of its sinister, shadowy atmosphere and it’s suicidally bleak lyrical message, and there’s a similar sense of ominous, oppressive dread looming over the likes of “Acolyte of the One” and “Holy Moonlight” (two of my personal stand-outs) which adds an even darker hue to the bone-rattling, bowel-loosening heaviness of the band’s sound.

Add to this the fact that Bennett’s vocals on hate-fuelled horror-hymns like “Swamp Mentality” and “Sacred Relic” (especially during the latter’s blisteringly blasphemous climactic refrain of “There is no god!“) are some of the most visceral and venmous he’s ever put to tape – overflowing not just with fear and fury but also deep-seated sense of elemental anguish and existential angst – and you might just begin to understand why You Are Safe From God Here is undeniably one of the heaviest albums, both sonically and emotionally, of the band’s career.

And if you don’t believe me just wait until you finally hear colossal closer “Eucharist II: Blood Loss” – whose lyrics directly confront the transcendent terror of living, and dying, in a world where not only is god not dead, but he… or it… is waiting, hungrily, on the other side for you – as if there’s one song here which truly hammers (and I do mean hammers) this point home it’s this one.

It’s a truly monstrous track, combining the high art of depression with the low art of aggression (think Van Gogh meets Van Damme) into nearly fourteen minutes of soul-crushing doom and heart-breaking gloom – embodied by the haunting, hopeless voice of Sunny Faris, whose solemn acceptance of her inevitable demise is all the more chilling when juxtaposed against Bennett’s insolent, yet ultimately impotent, raging against the dying of the light – whose gruesome, gruelling gravity slowly drags you down into a pit of abject despair where only the faintest glimmers of light and hope remain.

In the end then perhaps the true message of the band’s 13th album is that nowhere is truly safe… not from an uncaring god, and not from the emptiness inside us… as long as we continue to carry these things with us.

But we don’t have to carry them alone.