ACID BATH - "When The Kite String Pops"

Artist:  Acid Bath
Album:  When The Kite String Pops
Year:  1994
Genre:  Metal

Acid Bath present an ugly and unsettling vision.  If you let yourself succumb to this vision, you get a sense that the ominous aura is not premeditated, but something which is created organically by the five members.  Musically. lyrically and artistically this band expresses a multitude of caliginous and disturbing emotions.  This record just may be one of the dankest and evil releases I’ve encountered.  Black and death metal bands only dream of the darkness Acid Bath can conjure.  Although their second release, Pagean Terrorism Tacticts is delivered with the same nefarious demeanor, it doesn’t have the vicious nature of When The Kite String Pops.

A review of this particular record is not justified unless all artistic aspects are addressed.  The cover is an original portrait by American serial killer John Wayne Gacy of “Pogo the Clown,” a character Gacy portrayed while performing at children’s parties and charity events.  Many bands try to be extreme with grotesque pictures on their covers, but this was a real human that committed atrocities which devastated lives.  The painting reflects the ugliness and real life horror the convicted murderer inflicted on innocents during the 1970s and creates an unsettling display of a realm in which most bands wouldn’t dare to tread.  Only the subject matter and brutality of Mayhem’s “Dawn Of The Black Hearts” is equally devoid of human nature.

The painting is also is symbolic of the sounds and lyrics contained on this record.  The instrumentation is the sonic equivalent of anguish, dirt and desolation.  It’s heavy, virulent and often times, strangely enough, beautiful.  The listener finds the band often at odds with itself as they feverishly sway in and out of passages of doom, violence and grace.  Vocalist Dax Riggs complements these neurotic and volatile compositions with one of metal’s most fervidly diverse performances.  Vocally, he blends melodic and raspy singing, gut wrenching screams, drug-induced moaning, and banshee-esque shrieks.  Poetic and unstable stream-of-consciousness thoughts create nightmarish imagery and subject matter that one can only describe as deranged; but he doesn't fall into the lyrical traps of Satanism, cartoonish mutilation or other clichés bands use to ruffle the feathers of everyday people.  As previously mentioned, the organic nature is apparent.  The darkness this record exudes does not feel forced and reveals that there is just something a little off about these musicians.   And, in that, lies its strength.  From beginning to end, this record tears away at the senses and represents true art in musical form.

Listen to "The Mortician's Flame" here.