Acid Bath
When The Kite String Pops
[Rotten]


I've known about Acid Bath ever since this album came out in 1994. I used to own a CD of their radio edits and liked it very much but never bothered to buy the album itself. I still remembered the band though, and, six years later, when I saw a used copy of "Kite String," I grabbed it right away. Cultivated on the boggy Louisiana terrain where the Black Sabbath seeds had the (mis)fortune of being planted, Acid Bath created massive death-sludge flurry of the very exceptional caliber. These guys are much, much more than another Eyehategod clone. Much credit for lifting the band above their peers goes to the singer Dax Riggs, whose voice is the band's biggest asset. On the course of the album, it alternates between the usual raging screams and this deep, almost chant-like clean voice which really does a lot of good for the material, making it feel like real songs as opposed to the usual non-stop screamfest. Moreover, Riggs' vocal talents allow Acid Bath to expand their horizons and include two melancholy, yet chilling ballads "The Scream Of The Butterfly" and "The Bones Of Baby Dolls," the latter being purely acoustic. With that said, I do not mean to abase the role of the other band members who are more than competent in creating boisterous swamp-dirges that could send Ozzy & Co. running for cover. Lyrically, Acid Bath's world is wrapped in all things demented, paranoid and vile, which is not surprising, but what else would you expect from a band like this. Finally, the CD's cover art consists of morbid (look closely at the face of a clown on the front cover - clearly, it is a creation of an unhealthy mind) paintings by that oh-so-lovable, all-American clown/artist/serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Acid Bath released a follow-up album called "Paegan Terrorism Tactics," which is said to even more impressive than this one.


© 2000 boris