✦✦✧✧ This album has the same predilection for massive, plodding riffs, just like its companion piece Failure Will Follow. The difference is that, on this album, all but one track clocks in at under 3 minutes. The result is a collection of pieces that feel incomplete and fragmentary sketches. Perhaps this sort of thing will give metal new life on The Kids’ Social Media, but I find it harder to get into this particular material this particular way.

✦✦✦✧ This is The Acacia Strain’s Catch Thirty-Three.

✦✦✦✧ I can say, without hyperbole, that this is the most experimental deathcore album I’ve heard in years, if not ever. It contains all of the genre’s hallmark touches (seismic detuning of mushy guitars, compressed triggered drums, and the cookiemonsterest of vocals), but deployed in novel and unpredictable ways throughout the album.

✦✧✧✧ TAC are best when they aim for over-the-top detuned mayhem. What you get on this album instead are passages of riffs that are more often tepid rather than dreadful, interspersed with flow-killing bits of maudlin atmosphere, ill-timed tempo changes, and other bad choices.

★★☆☆ Rather than the extreme fearcore of “Wormwood” or sluggish tedium of “Death Is The Only Mortal,” The Acacia Strain treat us this time around to a detuned-as-always party album, of sorts. Not that you could ever accuse the band of being subtle, but more than ever they’re wearing this silly excesses on their sleeves.