Acid Bath: When the Kite String Pops

 

One foot in the dying grunge scene of the early '90s. The other sunk deep in NOLA, the cradle of sludge metal. That's how Acid Bath were born in Louisiana. Like creatures straight out of Alan Moore's mind, prowling swamps that reek of burnt gasoline, blood, desperation, and vodka.

I'm not going to talk about the cover, a painting by John Wayne Gacy. Yes, it helped the band sell a lot of records for an underground group, but it's not the heart of When the Kite String Pops. The title says it all. An impending sentence. The exact moment of anguish right before damnation. Or maybe salvation, when you're already on the gallows.

Without the Melvins, the sludge scene probably wouldn't be what we know today, although it would have been born anyway. Black Sabbath, Black Flag, and Southern Rock were already there. The Melvins just brought us closer and sped up the process. But another key piece, at least in Acid Bath's sound, was Alice in Chains. It's impossible not to recognize the influence of Layne Staley's voice and Jerry Cantrell's guitars.

Acid Bath's vocalist, Dax Riggs, sometimes sounds as unsettling as Staley. That existential anguish that doesn't ask permission before infecting you. But I'm not talking about the influence of an album like Facelift, which still carried some of the band's early glamorous hard rock. I'm talking about Dirt, where the band had already lost their minds and it sounds like a rainbow drowned in mud. Completely covered, suffocating to death. Multiply that by a thousand and you'll get something very close to Acid Bath, who, along with Eyehategod and Crowbar, put NOLA on the musical map. Again and again, even though hurricanes tried to erase them and the swamps tried to swallow them whole.

Maybe Acid Bath used Dirt as inspiration. Or maybe Jerry Cantrell used Acid Bath as a starting point for his Degradation Trip, another album that suffocates and corrodes with the same coldness.

Doom metal, grunge, and blues. A dense and toxic combination all at once. Sammy Duet and Mike Sanchez's guitars may have elements of the Melvins, but they also sound like Morbid Angel. There are traces of extreme metal in Acid Bath, no doubt. The rhythm section has some of the surgical precision of Exhorder. There are moments that remind me of Kyuss, that legendary band born under the annihilating desert sun. But these NOLA Kyuss aren't fighting against the brutal, crushing sun. They fight desperately not to be swallowed alive by swamps infested with beasts and anguish.

When the Kite String Pops sounds like a nightmare of devastating psychological impact. It's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre relocated to the swamps. The unstoppable killer chasing you with the chainsaw revving. If Dirt took you to the gates of madness, this album will sink you into the darkest abyss, never to return.

Black metal may have been born in Norway, but its existential equivalent was born in the swamps of NOLA. Both are equally terrifying. Later would come more elaborate things like Down and the reinvention of Corrosion of Conformity, but in 1994, Acid Bath were the kings of the swamp and When the Kite String Pops their chilling legacy.