Failure Will Follow is the album The Acacia Strain was meant to make. The second of two albums released on the same day, it is a revelation, an enigma. Like its art counterpart, Step Into the Light is the glimpse into the narrow lens of a natural if not gruesome scene: a robin feeding its chicks gore. It’s primal and strange, but not out of the realm of possibility. Failure Will Follow is the revelation, the feeding of its chicks from the massive decaying body of a deer – a graceful creature laid to waste and taken apart, its majesty a memory. In this way, while The Acacia Strain drew from the gory well for Step Into the Light, Failure Will Follow is the well – unlike anything the act has accomplished before.
I never figured the Massachusetts five-piece as the patient type, but their recent output has proved me wrong – and their twelfth full-length takes patience to a new level. Failure Will Follow is similar to its sister release Step Into the Light in its suffocating palette, as sludgy, slow, and massive as the band can muster, but it draws more comparisons to Crowbar and Sleep rather than Oceano or Black Tongue. Ultimately, The Acacia Strain weaponizes the vitriol of its deathcore and hardcore foundations in the purest incarnation of a doom album it has ever released. With its suffocating weight given room to sprawl and breathe, its experimentation daring and ambitious, and an organicity flowing through every movement, Failure Will Follow feels like The Acacia Strain finally capitalizing on their savage potential.
Comprised of three ten-minute-plus tracks, Failure Will Follow is composed with patience in mind. Colossal riffs feel like they finally find a home in The Acacia Strain’s catalog, and while they always feel huge, the speed and beatdown attitude have never allowed them time to revel. Failure Will Follow allows this reveling in pure reverence and solemnity, that while vitriol is infused within every movement, it feels like something more purposeful is hinted here. “Pillar of Salt” and “Basin of Vows” both embody this transcendence, balancing devastatingly thick two-ton riffs with moments of clean plucking, massive vocals, and touches of ambiance – sprawling tracks of ominous atmospherics. While all three tracks feature guest vocalists, these two stand apart. Full of Hell’s Dylan Walker shines in demonic shrieks alongside a build-up that injects a grim majesty in the climactic “Pillar of Salt,” while Primitive Man’s Ethan McCarthy surges in “Basin of Vows,” a throbbing force amid the thickest riffs of the album. A particularly notable feature is electronic artist iRiS.EXE in “Pillar of Salt” – her sirens song of “failure will follow you wherever you go – into the light, into the grave” atop a background of sludge chugs will haunt long after the album fades.
While the bookends are unrivaled successes, “Bog Walker” presents a unique dilemma. Its central riff is ripped straight outta Eyehategod’s Take as Needed for Pain in its bluesy drawl, steadily growing into massive doom. While this riff repeats ad nauseam for nearly half the seventeen-minute runtime, its movements and subtle differences quickly comprised the most memorable material. Its Sleep-esque tone fits The Acacia Strain’s style to a T, it sprawls like nobody’s business, and is an extremely far cry from the immediacy that graces Step Into the Light. As such, Failure Will Follow is not an easy listen in its patient doom, and stands in stark contrast to its counterpart’s brain-blasting intensity. “Pillar of Salt” and “Basin of Vows” are much more graceful interpretations and showcase a broad vista of potential, while “Bog Walker” is polarizing: some may find it haunting and ominous, while others may find it tedious and boring.
Failure Will Follow features The Acacia Strain’s best material to date, with “Pillar of Salt” in particular being a full capitalization of potential. While there are certainly kinks to iron out, with Step Into the Light simultaneously being the best and worst of what you expect of the Massachusetts outfit and Failure Will Follow taking a massive risk in nearly abandoning -core entanglement entirely. For better, it weaponizes its history of concussive heaviness for a new breed; for worse, one song revels for too long. However, for a band who seemed permanently stuck in their ways a decade ago, Step Into the Light and Failure Will Follow cement The Acacia Strain’s status as a consistently innovative mainstay in a style parched of ideas.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: N/A | Format Reviewed: Stream
Label: Rise Records
Websites: Website | Facebook | Bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: May 12th, 2023
