i was in breathless anticipation as i red about the anouncement of the new the acacia strain record 'coma witch'. you know about my feelings concerning the last record 'death is the only mortal'? to sum them up, i was highly disappointed about it. it was so exhausting, so inaccessible, and yes, so boring that i thought their good times were all through. but then came their teaser 7" 'above / below', these two songs promised a revival of their old sound.
with 'old sound' i mean the fantastic first three records up to their crowning achievement 'continent'. and now that i hold the record in hands and played it a few times on my turntable, i cannot get the grin off of my face. yes my the acacia strain are back. i welcome their regained straight forward riffing. of course they still have these off-beat elements and dissonant rhythms but they scaled them down to a digestiable dosage.
i'm really more than happy about this return to form. you know how it is, a loved band of yours strayed from the path and you just had to let them go. and then, out of the blue, they're coming home. welcome back! you sit around a table, chat about the new things, giggle about times you've been through together way back in the day and cast aside the recent misdeeds with a wave of the hand. listen to 'holy walls of the vatican' and to 'send help' and make yourself comfortable.
the second disc comes with a track called observer which spans over both sides of the vinyl. in the description text over at per koro, where i bought the record from, said this was a half an hour long song consisting of dark samples, growls and screams. i was initially put off by this statement. my first association coming to mind was the intro of the slipknot's 'iowa' album. you ever heard that? man, that is hard to take because it sounds so utterly insane to me. after i listened to 'observer' for the first time, i was relieved to find that it was nothing like that. it's simply an overlong song that gets under your skin. take the time and be rewarded!
i saw some pre-orders going up but only for clear vinyl and green for bundles. must have been already late to the process because later on i was informed about a 'starbust' colour via discogs more limited than the clear or green ones. as the release date came i checked at per koro and thankfully they had a coloured option available. by then i saw pics of a pruple marble on the net which had been chosen for distribution. i got that in the end and am very happy with it. it just looks lovely. don't care about the admittedly high pressing number of 2400 copies. comes with full album on cd. rise records. 2014.
