DISCOGRAPHY DEEP DIVE: Acid Bath + Dax Riggs
A legendary name that is finally reuniting, along with the return of their iconic singer - both great excuses to dive into their glorious past.
ACID BATH
It was funny that when the line-up for a fucking huge corporate metal festival in Las Vegas (you can easily google it if you want, they have enough advertising without me linking to it as well) was announced a couple of weeks ago, featuring big mainstream names like Metallica, Gojira, Queens Of The Stone Age, Linkin Park or Evanscence as headliners, what made the internet explode with awe and delight was the presence of one little sludge band that hasn’t existed in almost 30 years. And rightfully so - Acid Bath might have never really made it to “stardom”, whatever that means in underground heavy music terms, but their absolute uniqueness left an indelible mark in anyone who has ever come in contact with them, be it back in the day when they were active or during the decades after, as the surviving members continued their careers. As you probably know, the band ended after two albums when their bassist Audi Pitre was tragically killed in a traffic accident, but singer Dax Riggs and guitarist Sammy Duet in particular have been quite active since, the former fronting a couple of bands before venturing out in his own name - he is also coming back with that part of his career, with new solo album ‘7 Songs For Spiders’, his first in fifteen years, about to be released next January - , while the latter famously played in Crowbar and continues to slay with the mighty Goatwhore to this day, just to name a couple of his more well-known projects. So, to celebrate this return, we thought it’d be a great excuse to dive back into the short but splendid discographic career of Acid Bath, and add in a few Dax Riggs records for good measure. Enjoy the chronological ride!
ACID BATH
WHEN THE KITE STRING POPS
(1994, Rotten Records)
‘When The Kite String Pops’ is not only the first to appear on this list in chronological terms, but it would be the first in any other kind of ordering. So early on in the musical career of this New Orleans bunch of musicians, but still they managed to create something that sounds like nothing else, even to this day. On one hand, it takes a sort of half-defined genres like sludge (always a contentious term, especially since most of the bands “accused” of playing it have always denied it), given form by earlier pivotal Melvins or Eyehategod releases, or even stoner rock, smack dab in the middle of Kyuss’ golden years, and totally runs with them, smearing everything with traces of doom metal, thrash, psychedelic rock, proper blues (very much aided by Dax Riggs’ one-of-a-kind vocal styles) and a very Southern type of hazy swagger. On opener ‘The Blue’ alone, Dax swings from harsh screaming to Evil Elvis sort of drunken bluesman sadness, and the music fully follows those unpredictable dynamics. Songs are simultaneously laidback in a lysergic kind of way but fierce and biting when you least expect them to. Take ‘Jezebel’, for instance, which blasts out of the gates with a near-death metal crushing intro that abruptly stops so Dax can mumble “If I took this cigarette and put it out on you... Would you love me?" in one of the record’s creepier moments. And may I remind you we’re talking about an album with a painting from a literal serial killer (the infamous John Wayne Gacy) as its main artwork. The uneasy atmosphere created by the music is in fact always easily matched by the unsettling darkness of the lyrics, a particularly disturbing journey through the worst humanity can offer, and this is no more obvious than in the album’s centrepiece and natural highlight, ‘Scream Of The Butterfly’. An undisputed top-10 song of all time for me (I might build that list for you on a special post sometime), it’s a harrowing, skin-crawling experience every time you hear it, no matter how many years have passed, and in a way it encapsules everything that was ever fascinating about Acid Bath - the emotional depth, the unflinching horror, the soulful vocals, the riffs, the skewed melodies, the messy mix of genres, It’s got everything, and to just think we’ll get to hear it played live again is reason enough to welcome the Acid Bath comeback with open arms.
ACID BATH
PAEGAN TERRORISM TACTICS
(1996, Rotten Records)
From Gacy to Jack Kevorkian, Acid Bath didn’t really ease up on the controversial weight of the artwork origin from one album to another, but then again, they didn’t ease up on anything else either. While the debut is usually the one that gets all the attention and praise, ‘Paegan Terrorism Tactics’ is by no means a lesser record. It’s just different, which is saying something considering it took less than two years to appear, and how easy it would have been to just follow on that tried-and-tested formula that had worked so well before. But Acid Bath weren’t a safe band in any way, and while opener ‘Paegan Love Song’ sounds like them and no one else from the second that huge Sammy riff kicks in and Dax drawls “Dying felt so goddamn good today”, there are is a significantly different approach at work here. Cleaner in sound, with a less jumpy and unpredictable structuring of the songs, but at the same time using a broader palette, exploring acoustics, spoken words parts and even a grungier, Alice In Chains-like vibe on some of the songs. All in all, it sounds more direct, but also less metal than the debut, even allowing itself something like ‘Venus Blue’ that could have easily turned into a radio hit were it not for Dax’s punctuating shrieks and lyrics like “I taste the wreckage of crumbling faces / I know the pale thing in the darkest of places”. In hindsight, it sounds like a harbinger for songs that the singer would write on his solo career a few years after. Songs like that one, the moody ‘Graveflower’ or the brutal ‘Locust Spawning’ more than make up for the absence of something equivalent to ‘Scream Of The Butterfly’ on this record, and could well have been blueprints for the direction of songs on future releases. Alas, as we now know, it wasn’t to be. Still, Acid Bath left the kind of brilliance in two albums that most bands don’t achieve in ten or fifteen album careers, which is why there’s such a current wave of excitement about having them back, even if just on stage for now. Oh, and for completists, though I thought it would be a bit much to include it in this Deep Dive, there is a compilation of demos unimaginatively called ‘Demos: 1993–1996’ that you should totally get if you’re a fan and you haven’t yet.
DAX RIGGS
AGENTS OF OBLIVION
AGENTS OF OBLIVION
(2000, Rotten Records)
Agents Of Oblivion were a short-lived successor of sorts to Acid Bath, featuring Dax Riggs and guitarist Mike Sanchez, and even getting their name from an Acid Bath lyric line. It didn’t attract much attention at the time, unfortunately, but it still holds up as a really great rock album. That’s mainly the biggest gap between the Acid Bath mothership and this - Agents is much less metal, pratically none at all really, and in fact it’s even in its mellowest, more emotional moments that it shines the most. ‘Phantom Green’, ‘The Hangman’s Daughter’ and above all ‘Wither’ are essentially ballads, yet featuring that ghostly, fathomless feeling that would become such an important part of Dax Riggs’ solo output - it might be almost all acoustic guitars and weepingly beautiful melodies and soulful crooning, but man, it still feels so dense, so intense, so heavy. Even the covers rule - from an electrified version of Acid Bath’s ‘Dead Girl’ (which feels like a completely different song, to be honest) to a surprisingly affecting version of T. Rex’s ‘Cosmic Dancer’, there’s really not a weak moment here. Even with just two fifths of the line-up on it, I dare say that it could well have been Acid Bath’s third album and no one would have complained all that much. Go rediscover it right now if you didn’t pay proper attention at the time, will you?
DEADBOY & THE ELEPHANTMEN
IF THIS IS HELL, THEN I’M LUCKY
(2002, Elephantmen Recording Company / 2008, Fat Possum Records as a Dax Riggs album)
Dax’s artistic personality and the stamp he leaves on the bands he works with seems to be so strong that, Acid Bath aside (and by no means minimising his contribution there either!), most of the groups he’s been involved in end up being a mix of band and solo project. Such was the case with Deadboy & The Elephantmen, initially starting off as another lone venture and eventually going through several stages, first as a full band and then as a duo with drummer Tessie Brunet. In fact, this, the first album, was later reissued as a Dax Riggs album (same cover, different logo), a year after Deadboy disbanded. So you can look at it as a double-debut, the first Deadboy but also the first Dax record. However you do, it won’t change its enormous impact. There are still ties to Dax’s previous output, including Acid Bath, of course, that swampy, dark yet strangely welcoming vibe that is so typical still covers everything like a thick fog, but the music shifts ever more into the dark folk and even ambient territory sometimes. I keep using the word mellower, like I did on the Agents Of Oblivion album up there, but while that’s true in a way, it doesn’t mean that these are super chilled out records in any way. The tension is still there, as is the melancholy, the ache, and even the rage - the subtle crescendo of ‘Waking Up Insane’, for instance, might be one of the most heart-wrenching things you will ever hear, while ‘Barefoot In The Dark’ once again walks that fine line between fine beauty and unbearable heavy sadness with apparent ease, not only repeating the lyrical idea of the title, but also offering sorrowful repetition of lines such as “my death's alive there just waiting for me”. Whatever project you consider it to be the debut for, it’s a remarkably emotional one, fully showcasing the range of Dax’s songwriting that would shine so much in subsequent years.
DEADBOY & THE ELEPHANTMEN
WE ARE NIGHT SKY
(2006, Fat Possum Records)
The second and final Deadboy album is a tough one to pinpoint clearly. Recorded as a duo with the aforementioned Tessie Brunet, right in the middle of the White Stripes heyday, it should be mentioned, though it sounds nothing like them of course - and it seems to unfortunately have caught none of the dude-on-guitar-girl-on-drums rock duo hype it could/should have -, it flutters between acoustic wounded-animal ballads and stompy punk-blues rocking numbers (one of which, opener ‘Stop, I’m Already Dead’ actually being used on a popular TV series, ‘iZombie’, a few years later), and while there’s no complaining about the songs themselves, the structuring of the piece as an actual album is loose and sort of unconnected at best. Ultimately, it lives or dies on the songs themselves, and that’s how it still is able to triumph and remain very listenable almost two decades later. If you’re wondering about the kickass accuracy of the images I used to describe the music in that paragraph up there, I should confess that they were all stolen from their own description on their Bandcamp. If something’s perfect already, no need to mess with it. Anyway, though maybe it won’t conquer your heart fully like most of the records mentioned here, ‘We Are Night Sky’ still remains a fine listen. Not only is it perhaps the most polished and more “normal” album in Dax’s whole canon, but it also shows him at his rawest as a rocker, and to refer once again to that wonderful text on their Bandcamp, “if rocking hard is a crime, Deadboy are headed straight for the electric chair.”
DAX RIGGS
WE SING ONLY OF BLOOD OR LOVE
(2007, Fat Possum Records)
Even if technically ‘If This Is Hell…’ can be considered Dax’s solo debut, few doubts remain that his proper solo career began with those unmistakable, unforgettable first few seconds of ‘Demon Tied To A Chair In My Brain’. Wisely opening the album with what would become one of his most iconic songs (I can tell you it always raises hell with any crowd whenever I play it on DJ nights!), this seems to be where it all clicked for the singer and songwriter as a performer under his own name, establishing his personality and unique take on each of these songs. The ties to Acid Bath are by now minimal, reduced to the unavoidable, the handpicked backing band is fantastic (including Skunk/Chavez/Zwan’s Matt Sweeney and Endless Boogie’s Andy MacLeod), and the balance between dark folk, rock and a few metallic surges is absolutely spot-on. Dax’s voice is more versatile than ever, not relying solely on this bluesy croon of yore but coming at you always brimming with confidence, either quietly fragile or full-on and powerful, or anything in between, according to the requirements of the songs. The opening pair of ‘Demon Tied To A Chair In My Brain’ and ‘Didn’t Know Yet What I’d Known When I Was Bleedin’’ is hard to beat, but the playful jig of ‘Living Is Suicide’ (“the devil is a friend of mine… sometimes”) and the raw porch ballad that is ‘Dog-Headed Whore’ are also a couple of highlights among many others. Funnily enough, no song ever reaches the three-minute mark, which greatly confused more normie-minded people (such as on this hilariously off-the-mark Pitchfork review), but aside from being a great punk statement, it also shows how great music doesn’t need to overstay its welcome to become memorable and intensely replayable.
DAX RIGGS
SAY GOODNIGHT TO THE WORLD
(2010, Fat Possum Records)
If you detect a certain Tom Waits-y vibe from that cover and those titles, even before you throw yourself at the music, you’re absolutely right. Subtle and mischievous, deceptively calm, it looks at first glance like an artist’s “I don’t wanna grow up” statement, but then ends up being his most mature piece of all. Once again plundering the endless riches of Dax’s Bandcamp music descriptions, he really does come across as “the fool in your tarot deck - trippin’ over his own tombstone, reaching into the atmosphere, and pulling spirits from the air.” Any other band would take a song called ‘I Hear Satan’ and run with it as full-on you can imagine, but Dax turns it into a shadowy, haunting piece, poetic and evocative and even with a surprising political twist at the end (“I hear Satan in the basement of the… Pentagon”). In a way, it’s almost like he’s holding up all the blues tropes by the moonlight and smearing a bit of blood (…or love?) on them to make them all his own, like throwing ‘Gravedirt On My Blue Suede Shoes’, visiting his own version of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, begging to ‘Let Me Be Your Cigarette’ (gotta love the note on the Genius page for this lyric - “According to an interview, Dax doesn’t remember what this means.”) or bidding adieu to everything with a sort of wink-wink hopeful ‘See You All In Hell Or New Orleans’. A profundly nocturnal album that will envelop you fully without the need to be “jazzy”, a kind of Bohren & der Club of Gore set in the bayou, a perfect alternative if Tom Waits would have declined the ‘Night on Earth’ soundtrack, ‘Say Goodnight To The World’ might just be the quietly sleeping, understated masterpiece in the man’s catalogue.
DAX RIGGS
7 SONGS FOR SPIDERS
(2025, Bright Shadow / House Arrest)
I know, I’m super-privileged to have already been able to listen to the new album, and it’s still so long to the release date (January 24th 2025) that I don’t want to be an ass and give you a super-detailed review or descrition or whatever. Suffice to say that ‘Deceiver’ really is a fantastic opener that lays the ground for what comes next, and that despite it having been fifteen years since the last one, Dax still doesn’t feel the need to come back with some sort of grandiose piece or some overblown “ambitious” reinvention. It does sound different from his previous records, of course, just like always, but these very electric seven songs in less than half an hour are still coming from the exact same essence, that morose and strangely euphoric voice from the darkness that is esoteric and poetic but at the same time earthy and raw. Here’s hoping the next advance song will be ‘Even The Stars Fall’, with its beautiful repetition of “I got my soul all tangled up in a song” at the end. And hey, no one knows yet what the Acid Bath reunion will still bring besides the live shows, but judging on their frontman’s work, inspiration doesn’t seem lacking.
You can find Acid Bath on Instagram and Spotify.
You can find Dax Riggs on Instagram, Spotify and Bandcamp, where you will find pre-order links for ‘7 Songs For Spiders’.
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