Acid Bath

Paegan Terrorism Tactics (Rotten)
by Scott Hefflon

I’d originally considered Acid Bath a one-gimmick wonder. I remember nothing about When the Kite String Pops other than the cover, “Pogo the Clown” by serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Upon reading their bio, it appears they’re a multi-gimmick wonder. A radio-only EP of edited tracks from the last album featured sketches by “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez, the radio-edit version of Paegan Terrorism Tactics has an original drawing by the “Hillside Strangler” Kenneth Bianchi, and the street release uses “For He is Raised” by “Dr. Death,” Jack Kevorkian.

Besides all the artwork hoopla, I’ve rediscovered how brutally amazing Acid Bath is. With the popularization of swamp stomp monsters such as Down, Corrosion of Conformity, Crowbar, and Eyehategod, Acid Bath is almost sure to follow. They’ve honed their diverse influences into an almost uniformly aggressive style. Blending sludge and swamp grooves with hints of death, noise, industrial, and screamcore, Acid Bath usually stay within the boundaries of melodic, ploddingly heavy, almost spiritual ugly rock. I say spiritual because vocalist Dax Riggs has a kinda ’70s acid rock passion to his voice, much like, say, Eric Wagner of Trouble, or Jonas of Only Living Witness, or, to really make a stretch, Jim Morrison. I say ugly because no matter how melodic Dax’s wavering voice may be, it’s accompanied by a screaming tantrum, like a hideous, insistently squawking bird of prey perched upon the shoulder of a soft-spoken wanderer. A Mr. Hyde companion for Dr. Jekyll, if you will. Not to mention, the aforementioned soft-spoken gent is making conversation while surrounded by tuned-low guitars growling like menacing garbage trucks.

Beginning with track five, “Locust Spawning,” the songs take a sudden turn. The hints of industrial and death take control of the body like a possession, and now the screaming demon is in command. Dissident guitars fade in and out like a chainsaw operator testing the Doppler Affect, and the former lead vocalist is allowed to sing only when his evil counterpoint pauses for breath. As the song fades, it seamlessly becomes track six, “Old Skin,” a spoken-word oddity with Pinhead reading Jim Morrison poetry as TVs broadcast white noise and dying factories groan their last words, echoing off the far walls, distorted, backwards, nonsensical, maddening. In Floydian fashion, the song bleeds into “New Death Sensation,” a subtle guitar-and-voice song of desolation that builds into eerie orchestration. “Venus Blue” sounds freakishly like a heavier version of something from Jesus Christ Superstar, yet with the vocals floating in a key different from the rest. Yes, it’s wrong, but it was obviously done on purpose. How irritatingly arty. “13 Fingers” roars through in typical metalcore style, but is doubled in the second verse by a gibberish-spewing goblin, tenfold what Gibby Hayes did for “Jesus Built My Hotrod,” who is supposedly screaming, “I can hear the ghost of Hitler on the radio GO GO GO Blood makes the grass grow I blew a load of Jesus into Mary’s hole I trace the skull in your face and I remember I kissed a dark-eyed girl with 13 fingers.” And the goblin grins maliciously. “New Corpse” blends that horrific snare drum sound that cheesy, under-produced death metal bands have, tok!, with driving guitar parts Testament would’ve been happy to call their own, and, bear with me here, a round of those screaming creatures sharing vocal duties. This is downright creepy. This makes A.C. sound like kid stuff. Looping screams, screams rapping back and forth off each other, and screams layered with no apparent regard to harmony, but simply to make your sensibilities whimper. The elongated intro to the last song, “Dead Girl,” provides a pleasant chance to recoup. Simple, countrified guitar strumming with simple, almost grunge-gone-blues singing. The guitar gets a little stumbling, the vocals begin a melody that’d make for a popular Soundgarden song, yet the pieces are disjointed, seeming to unravel as quickly as they’re spun. Whispers of Beatlesque octaves roll like waves, barely perceptible, and the final chorus repeats in my head long after the song fades away, like a blinding image burned into your retina. “The sound of the ocean is dead, it’s just the echo of the blood in your head.”