The Acacia Strain have released a new EP called “It Comes In Waves” through Cold Casket Activities. The effort was recorded by the band themselves while out on the road. Mixing duties were handled by Steve Seid of Graphic Nature Audio. You can find the release on digital platforms, or below. Vinyl pressings of the album are planned for February. Pre-order them here.
According to the band’s frontman, Vincent Bennett, the release serves more like a single track than an EP.
Bennett on the concept
“The main concept is that humans have believed in deities and gods and angels and demons and all of these otherworldly, infallible beings since the beginning of humanity. They all, throughout cultures, throughout time, throughout everything, they all have commonalities, they all have this feeling of leadership, of manipulation, of humans always follow whatever these deities say and they’re known to be all-knowing, all-powerful and, like I said before, infallible. The concept of this album is although all of these cultures have different gods, what if it’s all the same “gods” that have been, throughout history, manipulating and shaping humanity?
I’m not saying they’re aliens, but I’m saying they’re inter-dimensional beings that have a personality and have kind of just been manipulating humanity since the beginning. They’ve been around forever. We haven’t and they saw us as an opportunity to have a little fun.
That’s basically what the album is about. It’s about this idea of gods actually being not only real but also physical beings that are just having their way with us at our expense, just so they can have something to do.”
Regarding future plans, and another album he stated:
“We wrote and recorded two albums last year. We recorded this one…. we’re still on Rise Records. We recorded this album first, from April to June, then we went on tour, we got home, we went to Iowa and we recorded another record for Rise Records. It was a very stressful year when it came to music and I don’t think anybody in my band wants to write a record for another ten years because we just did two pretty much back to back.
We will be supporting this record but our next record is going to get announced I think very soon and the first part of it is going to be support on this Rotting Out tour. It’s a lot for people to take in but I think nowadays you need to keep people interested and you need to keep music going. You need to make people understand that you’re not done. You’re not going away. You need to keep it creative so with this record, ‘It Comes in Waves‘, we did our very off brand—I don’t even want to say off brand because I don’t think we have a brand. We try to do something different every record while still keeping it comfortable.
This was our outside-the-box record and our next one is less experimental I want to say. I don’t think people are going to expect for us, one, to come up with two records so close together but for us to come out with a record that sounds like this one does. At the same time, after hearing ‘It Comes in Waves‘, I think people are going to be like “OK, this band can do different things.”
In 2020, we’ll be a band for 19 years. To keep it going without putting the same record out over and over again, we’ll have to do something like ‘It Comes in Waves‘ and after that, see where it goes. Because we wrote these records so close together, it kind of bleeds over and it bleeds over in a way that you’ll be able to tell they were written around the same time. But at the same time, you’ll say “OK, this is progression, I get it and I’m really happy to hear this band doing something different.” I hope it comes across as different. I don’t read reviews, but I hope when the reviews come in, it’s not just “Oh, well it’s another Acacia Strain record. This is what we expected!”
We want people to go, “They did an OK job at moving forward.”
You can find more of the interview with Bennettat decibelmagazine.com.
