Acacia Strain

To be fair, the Acacia Strain set the bar ludicrously high with The Dead Walk, a pummelling monster of a mosh record that forced every other piecemeal act vying for attention in the genre to step their game up. Continent's inevitably disappointing, but not altogether awful, songwriting and bottom-of-the-barrel production set them back a fair bit, and Wormwood improves somewhat upon the former, while Zeuss does his best to pump some life into the latter. The inclusion of eight-string guitars and general reliance on slower tempos recall The Dead Walk superficially, reintroducing the Meshuggah influence, but shedding the snappy energy that set them apart from the average lumbering beat down act. The result is a bit of a mixed bag. While undeniably better than Continent, it fails to expand or improve upon the formula best exemplified on 3750 and The Dead Walk, suffering from a bloated running time and some obvious filler, such as pitifully repetitive album closer "Tactical Nuke." Ultimately, the band remain one of the heavier and more reliable acts in the genre, but the formula is quickly wearing thin and the Acacia Strain run the risk of being outgunned by their imitators in the near future if they don't pull a rabbit or two out of their collective hats, and fast.