Post by PsychedeliCon on Jul 6, 2019 21:01:35 GMT
Howdy folks,
I realize I am not the most active person around here but I stumbled across something I deemed interesting today and thought I'd try to formulate my thoughts on it and present the events as they happened.
So, it began sometime 2 years ago when I took a dive deep into the stoner / doom underground music scene. I had by pure luck come across the youtube channel "Stoned Meadow of Doom" where I was confronted with an overwhelming number of full album uploads to choose from and listen. I had only briefly been familiar with the stoner genre at all, having been recommended the Band "Queens of the Stone Age" by an online contact I had at the time. Through that I discovered Kyuss, the band that preceded Qotsa, and eventually while listening to Kyuss on Youtube, a band called Earthless popped up in my recommendations. 3rd wave Psychedelic Rock touching on Heavy Psych, with long 20-30 minute songs; needless to say, I was hooked almost right away. So a few weeks went by and I listened to some more Earthless on youtube when I encountered an upload of one of their albums on said youtube channel, which was my very first encounter with it. What opened up to me was a list of albums and bands showing up in my recommended videos that I could not have anticipated and that have changed my views on music drastically, and brought me to realize that rock and metal are nowhere near as dead as people think they are. So the first underground band on that channel that I clicked on was called Heavy Stone, a small israeli Band who had only just released their debut album. Black Sabbath influences as well as Heavy Psych elements made me quickly realize what a great album I had stumbled across. I then looked up the band, now yet aware that I had entered the circle of underground music that forms the underground stoner / doom music scene. I discovered a few groups on facebook named along the lines of "Stoner / Doom / Southern / Sludge" and so on. Joined a couple of them, quickly seperating the inactive ones from the active ones and beginning the process of becoming a part of those communities.
One of the groups I stumbled across was called "SMOD Nation" and it turned out to be the facebook group run by the owner of said youtube channel. Needless to say, I joined this group as well. By early 2017 I had familiarized myself with about 20-30 of these small underground bands, bought a couple albums and was essentially in the early phase of what would turn out to be an almost infinite stream of album discoveries and band recommendations that I came upon during my time spent browsing posts in those groups and of course listening to the youtube channel.
On the side I rediscovered an internet radio station that I have first been recommended by snakelady a few years prior - it was called Radio Home of Rock and all the radio show hosts on it were status quo fans. For those of you who remember, there was even a forum thread about said station posted by one of the hosts on one of the old SQ forums that no longer exist. I am unsure if it was the official board, or the one after that. The name of that host was "The Nightliner" (username munichquo), and by february 2017 I had begun to tune into his shows again.
Nothing special happened for a few weeks, just some album discoveries and occasionally listening to Radio Home of Rock on some thursdays and sundays - whenever he used to be on air at the time. Then I had an idea; what if I were to start hosting a show on Radio Home of Rock myself? So I got in touch with the owner of the station and on May 27th (or 28th, not sure), I hosted my very first internet radio show on Radio Home of Rock - after a multi week period of time spent acquiring the necessary hardware and software and getting everything set up, as well as recording a test show and of course getting in contact with bands in order to build a music database big enough to allow me to have a good amount of variety right from the start.
During all that and since, I was active in those music groups on facebook and first started encountering posts about an american Sludge Metal band called Acid Bath. Coming from a classic rock and death metal background myself - genres I went through listening to over the years prior - I had a listen to Acid Bath's music and noticed right away that this band was nothing like anything else I had encountered in the underground stoner / doom scene. They reminded me of the swedish death metal / progressive rock band "Opeth" in the sense that they too mixed death metal elements with more quiet sections, clean vocals with metal vocals. But they did it differently - unlike any other band I have discovered before or come across since. Being familiar with the death metal genre quite well, especially its pioneer band "Death", I noticed alot of parallels between their sound and Acid Bath right away. Guitars playing riffs that were about as death metal as it gets, double bass on the drums, and of course the metal vocal parts. So I decided to point that out in the comments below one Acid Bath themed post in one of the facebook groups. The result was that my comments - about Acid Bath being borderline death metal and how I couldn't really grasp how they were held at such a legendary status in a scene that has no other bands that sound remotely like them - were met with responses along the lines of "Acid Bath aren't death metal, they're sludge metal" or "Acid Bath sound nothing like death metal". That was odd - there were clearly alot of parallels and they weren't hard to notice.
So at this point it is established that Acid Bath are quite a heavy band with elements of genres unrelated to the stoner / doom scene and hardly any elements that would actually fit into the description of that scene, yet the scene evidently worshipped them and held them at a legendary status. Intrigued I started listening to them more - namely their debut album "When the kite string pops". I also learned more about the band and about their songwriting. The lyrics were somewhat deranged, describing thoughts of criminals, describing murders, describing insanity - but not necessarily in a violent sense. Acid Bath's lyrics can be unsettlingly eerie. To shine some light on the "how", here is a snippet of the lyrics of a song called "Graveflower" off their second album "Paegan Terrorism Tactics".
Like Murder
Stoned I awoke in your temple
To blackness above you
And death beside me
Where kitchen knives conspire
Razor blades make bloodless love
Like Murder
The ghost of a pale girl is solemnly following me
Pale will she follow me
Into the sea
I feel the flowers screaming
To consume you
Stoned I awoke in your temple
To blackness above you
And death beside me
Where kitchen knives conspire
Razor blades make bloodless love
Like Murder
The ghost of a pale girl is solemnly following me
Pale will she follow me
Into the sea
I feel the flowers screaming
To consume you
The line "like Murder" is whispered and the lyrics are sung in a clean style, which really gives the song a beautiful yet unsettling sound. I couldn't write something that does what this does more perfect than it is executed on that album. Not that I'm a prolific writer or that this actually makes much of a point with me in the equasion, but we'll file that under the category "in a manner of speaking".
To cut a long story a bit shorter - to this day I still haven't figured out why Acid Bath is so popular in this particular music scene.
Back to what I learned about the band. I also found out that they had only released two albums in total. The one I was already familiar with - "When the kite string pops". As well as the aforementioned "Paegan Terrorism Tactics" that I gave a listen at the time but found nowhere near as interesting. The band did in fact record a third album but it never saw the light of day and the guitarist only handed out a few copies to close friends.
Responsible for the especially unique style of Acid Bath were mostly two of the band members. Bassist and backing vocalist Audie Pitre, and frontman/singer Dax Riggs.
Inevitably I found out that Audie Pitre had died in a car crash in 1997 when a drunk driver crashed into the car of his parents, killing both of them and Audie himself, with only his little brother surviving the accident. The band recorded the third album with a new bassist as a consequence but Acid Bath without him just wasn't the same and so they broke up before the album could be released.
Since Acid Bath broke up, rumours of a reunion have spread throughout the web on numerous occasions, but were always shot down by either Dax Riggs or former guitarist and Goatwhore frontman Sammy Duet. Henceforth, and it pains me to say this, the chance of Acid Bath reuniting in the future is quite small, as is the chance of the general public ever getting a chance to hear that third album. The reasons given for why a reunion won't take place differ from band member to band member. Dax Riggs says he just can't do the vocal parts anymore the way he used to; that singing metal vocals is quite demanding and you gotta build up to being able to sing like that and then keep doing it or you'll have trouble keeping that level, not to mention the negative effects it has on the voice long term. Guitarist Sammy Duet however credits the reason as to why there won't be a reunion to his opinion that there can never be an Acid Bath without Audie Pitre - a sentiment shared by most of the surviving band members. This third unreleased album, as well as the fact that there will never be a reunion, alongside other factors like the scarcity of live recordings of their performances online, and another important factor that is their label Rotten Records and their practices - this all contributes to their legendary status they have in the general stoner / doom scene as well as the local Louisiana music scene.
The practices of their label that I referred to mostly amount to taking down any uploads of the band's material to youtube with very few exceptions, and going to lengths like even taking down whole channels to achieve that. According to the label, this is to protect the band from being ripped off; prevent their music from being streamed for free or almost for free - like on spotify or iTunes - and the band won't get underpaid by said streaming services. The flipside of the coin is of course the lack of exposure achieved this way, which of course can be named as another factor as to why the band is one of the underground scene's best kept secrets.
Putting all that aside and getting on with why I am making this forum thread, a video recently showed up on youtube, and there is no real way to describe it so I'll just include the link so you can have a look for yourself.
For anyone unfamiliar with Acid Bath or the video series it is a part of, this will most likely just be a confusing compilation of short clips filled with unknown song references. But to somebody familiar with the band and all their music, its a beautiful love letter to some of the most unique music you can come across.
And at the time I wasn't able to count myself into the aforementioned category of being familiar with all their music, despite knowing the band. After all, while I knew my way perfectly around their debut album at the time, I had only listened to their second album one or two times by that point, and both times over a year prior.
Inspired by the video to check them out and especially intrigued by the clip starting at about 1:28 and lasting for a good couple seconds, I decided to have another listen. What became a curious listen to an album I didn't really like the previous times I had heard it quickly became two listens, three, and eventually I found myself listening to the album on a daily basis, at times 2-3 times a day. This all happened in the last 2 weeks.
My interest in Acid Bath revived and having finally discovered what was essentially still "new" music to me, the disappointment hit me hard when I realized that I was basically familiar with all public Acid Bath material now and that my chance of ever hearing the third album with the rumoured title "Killer Rat Poison" was low.
Luckily there was still plenty of related music to be discovered - and still is. After Acid Bath broke up, Dax Riggs started a new band called Agents of Oblivion that released one album I have yet to listen to. Afterwards he started a band called "Deadboy & the Elephantmen" which only released one album as well, before eventually ending up only doing solo work from that point onwards. Of these other musical endeavours, the first one I had a listen to was his 2010 album "Say goodnight to the world" - a brilliant rock album without any notable metal elements, and with thoroughly clean vocals yet the same old special songwriting style that touches on dark topics in a unique fashion. That was two days ago, and I enjoyed that album alot and plan to have a few more listens to it over the next few days and weeks hopefully.
So finally we arrive at today's chapter of this ... formulation of thoughts and recollection of events. It started with me browsing youtube and considering what Dax Riggs material to listen to today. At first I thought I'd have another listen to said 2010 album, but then I decided to check out his Deadboy & the Elephantmen work instead, since youtube recommended me a few songs off it.
When I had typed the name of the band into youtube and hit search, the first song I came across was "Stop, I'm already dead". Of course this immediately intrigued me since it was the kind of song name I was expecting from Dax Riggs at this point, with others from the Acid Bath days being names like "Hymns of the needle freak" or "Finger paintings of the insane" - you get the point; there's a theme here, even if the music is vastly different.
What I didn't realize at the time I clicked this youtube result was that it actually has over 2 million views already. I had a listen to the song, enjoyed it, didn't think much of it. So I decided to visit the comment section of the video since I generally enjoy reading what other people think about Dax Riggs and his works - only to find that the comments hardly had anyone even mentioning Dax Riggs at all. Instead, their content went along the lines of "I am here because of iZombie".
As it turns out, part of the song forms the title to the TV show "iZombie" that is produced by the "The CW" network; more specifically, the part forming the intro sequence begins about 1:19 minutes into the song.
And this is where the story circles back to snakelady - because I am aware that she is a fan of that TV show and obviously through the title melody has been familiar with one of my favorite musicians for quite a while. Which I guess I found notable enough to write quite a long post about it.
What I want to conclude with is that I believe Dax Riggs is one of the most underrated musicians in modern time, having been in a number of bands with various styles, and having proven to be both a very humble person as well as a very talented songwriter and musician with a musical catalogue well worth exploring, even if one does not really like or appreciate his Acid Bath era efforts. It makes me kind of happy that a short piece of his work has found its way onto mainstream television and has brought Dax's music onto a whole new audience that his earlier works just weren't able or even intended to reach.
Anyways, this is where I'll end these ramblings.
I hope you found this story interesting or perhaps fun or even informative.
I'd be interested in reading your thoughts about Acid Bath, Dax Riggs, or this song in particular.
Here are some links to music referred to in this thread, starting out with the song in question of course!
If you decide to have a listen to the Acid Bath era material, be aware that it takes some getting used to. I certainly wasn't blown away by either album on first listen to, and I can easily understand if the metal vocals or heavier songs form an instant turn-off for some of you. Especially on Paegan Terrorism Tactics there are a number of songs that even I don't like, mostly the heavy ones coming after Diäb Soulé. It takes a number of listens to both albums to really get into the band, but once you see how beautifully and eerily written their music is, and how strangely perfect it works together, it is hard not to appreciate this band.