Acid Bath

For the Alien Sex Fiend album, see Acid Bath (album). For the Acid Bath Murderer, see John George Haigh.

Acid Bath is an American sludge metal band from Houma, Louisiana that was active from 1991 to 1997. Regarded as one of the first and most influential sludge metal bands, they combined a doom metal foundation with elements of hardcore punk, death metal, gothic rock, blues, grunge, and Southern rock to create their unique sound. The band broke up following the death of bassist Audie Pitre in a January 1997 traffic collision, but announced a reunion in October 2024.

Acid Bath
Background information
Origin	Houma, Louisiana, U.S.
Genres	Sludge metal
Years active	1991–1997 2024–present
Spinoffs	Agents of Oblivion
Members	Dax Riggs Sammy Duet Mike Sanchez
Past members	Audie Pitre Joseph Fontenot Jimmy Kyle Tommy Viator

History

Initial career

Acid Bath formed in 1991. The band was based south of New Orleans in several small towns including Houma, Thibodaux, Morgan City, and Galliano. Acid Bath was an incarnation of two bands, Dark Karnival which featured Audie Pitre, Sammy Pierre Duet, and Tommy Viator, and Golgotha which featured Dax Riggs, Mike Sanchez, Jimmy Kyle, and Jerry "Boon" Businelli. Golgotha's bassists were in frequent rotation finally culminating with Chad Pierce, who would then be succeeded by Pitre during Acid Bath's formation. Tommy Viator was later replaced by Jimmy Kyle on drums but would return to play keyboards toward the end of the band's career. Joseph J. Fontenot was the bassist for a short period of time.

Influenced by thrash metal as well as bands and artists such as Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Celtic Frost, Carcass, and Darkthrone, Acid Bath recorded their demo Hymns of the Needle Freak with their manager and producer Keith Falgout in 1993. The strength of the demo earned them a deal. They released When the Kite String Pops produced by Spike Cassidy in 1994, followed two years later by their second and final effort Paegan Terrorism Tactics (also produced by Keith Falgout). Neither gained them mainstream success, but both albums earned a high degree of underground acclaim. In 2005, another album composed of their demos, Demos: 1993–1996, was released.

The last show Acid Bath ever performed took place at the Shreveport Municipal Auditorium on April 25, 1997. Crowbar, Floodgate, and Dead Industry were also on the bill that night. Jeromy Boullion played guitar for Acid Bath instead of Mike Sanchez. Acid Bath didn't get paid because the show wasn't promoted properly and not enough people showed.

Break-up and subsequent projects

After two studio albums, Acid Bath's career came to an abrupt end on January 23, 1997, when bass guitarist Audie Pitre and his parents were killed by a drunk driver who had run a stop sign. Kelly Pitre, Audie's brother, was the only one of four family members to survive the incident, escaping with only a broken rib and a mild neck fracture.

While rumors of another album circulated after the band's end, nothing new surfaced. Sammy Duet owns a tape of him and Mike Sanchez coming up with riffs for a possible third Acid Bath album. He mentioned this tape on his interview with Does It Doom?. The tape was labeled "Rat Poison" because neither of them could come up with an album name. One of the members saw some rat poison in a box at the rehearsal space and said "just call it fucking Rat Poison". It was also rumored that some of the riffs were used for the first Goatwhore album; however, this was proven to be false.

Tommy Viator played drums on Disincarnate's album Dreams of the Carrion Kind with the well-known death metal guitarist James Murphy. Dax Riggs and Mike Sanchez went on to perform in the band Agents of Oblivion, releasing one self-titled album in 2000 and disbanding shortly thereafter. Starting in 2000, Riggs was also the frontman for the swamp rock band Deadboy & the Elephantmen, before he began releasing material under his own name in 2007. Sammy Pierre Duet was once a member of Crowbar, but has since left the band. He is now a member of the blackened death metal band Goatwhore and Ritual Killer and his doom metal band with Kelly Pitre (the brother of Audie) Vual. Sammy Duet has remained an open satanist since his days in Acid Bath. Audie formed a metal band in 1995, blending black metal vocals with the heavy sound of multiple bassists with no guitars, known as Shrüm. Tommy Viator and Joseph Fontenot were also members of Shrüm. Shrüm utilized two distorted low-end basses, and Fontenot would alternate between playing a distorted high-end bass and a clean bass. Fontenot later played bass for Devourment for two years. Joseph Fontenot is now a drill sergeant in the U.S. Army.

In 2014, rumors started that Acid Bath were reuniting with a new vocalist because Jimmy Kyle reached out to vocalist of Slipknot Corey Taylor with a very vague message stating "Acid Bath is in search of a vocalist. Please send Mp3, demo, videos or any music links performing Acid Bath songs." However, these rumors were dismissed by other band members stating that "There is no ACID BATH without [late bassist] Audie Pitre, so there will never be 'new' ACID BATH material", and that "Currently, most of the surviving members of ACID BATH — Jimmy, Mike, and myself — have been considering the possibility of doing some shows in the future, as an ACID BATH tribute band, but nothing has been set in stone, and it is still just an idea."

Reunion

On October 15, 2024, it was announced Acid Bath would be playing their first show in 28 years at the Sick New World festival in Las Vegas on April 12, 2025. Along with returning original members (Riggs, Duet, and Sanchez), Zack Simmons (Goatwhore), and Alex Bergeron (ex-Agents of Oblivion) were announced on drums and bass respectively. Although the Sick New World appearance was initially announced as a one-off reunion show, the band will play the second date of the Sonic Temple festival in Columbus, Ohio on May 9, 2025.

Musical style

Acid Bath is best known for blending extreme, death metal-influenced sludge metal with a mixture of death growls and melancholic goth/grunge-style vocals and acoustic guitar passages, as well as use of sampling and spoken word poetry. AllMusic has called the band's sound "difficult to pigeonhole" and described it as "a blend of Black Sabbath-like sludge, bluesy Southern rock, death metal, hardcore, and hints of goth and industrial". In a Pit Magazine interview, vocalist Dax Riggs classified their sound as "death rock". In another interview, guitarist Sammy Duet described their sound as "gothic hardcore".

The band sampled sound clips from controversial movies including Blue Velvet and A Clockwork Orange. Dax Riggs' vocals were processed, which produced an industrial feel; some other instruments have been processed through industrial effects in their recordings (such as the snare drum on the second half of "New Death Sensation"). One of Acid Bath's most trademark sounds was the way in which they crafted multiple tempo changes and worked them into the song structure. Their experimentation drifted into diverse territory. The song "Scream of the Butterfly" is an acoustic blues song with double bass drum patterns toward the end of the song. The song "The Bones of Baby Dolls" experiments with folk musicianship, and the song "Dead Girl" was described as a country song by Dax Riggs.

Dax Riggs' lyrics are frequently poetic, often displaying an obsession with death, drug use, mental illness, dark humor, Louisiana-based regional culture, and continuous references to animism as well as paganism, nihilism, and misanthropy. He has claimed these inspirations are culled from comic books, namely those authored by Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and Clive Barker, and has also expressed admiration for ANSWER Me! and Boiled Angel. AllMusic's William York has stated that the song "Venus Blue" could have been a radio hit "if not for the graphic lyrics". Another facet of their presentation which may not have endeared them to popular sentiment was the use of art by John Wayne Gacy and Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Due to the controversy surrounding Kevorkian's artwork For He Is Raised on the album, Paegan Terrorism Tactics was initially banned from Australia. The ban has since been lifted. The cover of the band's 1994 extended play simply entitled Edits featured the artwork of Richard Ramirez. The cover of their 1996 compilation entitled Radio Edits featured the artwork of Kenneth Bianchi. Their song "Diäb Soulé" ("Drunken Devil" in Cajun French) starts out with an audio sample of Jim Jones of the People's Temple screaming. Their song "Toubabo Koomi", mistranslated as "Land of White Cannibals", is a reference to the novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family.

Despite only releasing two albums, as well as a number of radio edits and an official bootleg DVD, Acid Bath gained a strong underground following (especially in Louisiana) owing to the unique, experimental nature of their music. They have been cited as an influence on Slipknot's self-titled debut.

Members

Current members

• Dax Riggs – lead vocals (1991–1997, 2024–present)
• Sammy "Pierre" Duet – guitars, vocals (1991–1997, 2024–present)
• Mike Sanchez – guitars, vocals (1991–1997, 2024–present)

Current live members

• Alex Bergeron – bass (2024–present)
• Zack Simmons – drums (2024–present)

Former members

• Jimmy Kyle – drums (1991–1997)
• Audie Pitre – bass guitar, backing vocals (1991–1997; died 1997)
• Joseph Fontenot – bass guitar (1997)
• Tomas Viator – keyboards (1996–1997; died 2024)

Former live members

• Jeromy Boullion – guitar (1997)

Discography

Studio albums

• When the Kite String Pops (1994)
• Paegan Terrorism Tactics (1996)

Demos

• Wet Dreams of the Insane (Golgotha demo) (1991)
• Screams of the Butterfly (1992)
• Demo II (1993)
• Hymns of the Needle Freak (1993)
• Liquid Death Bootleg (1993)
• Radio Edits 1 (1994)
• Radio Edits 2 (1996)
• Paegan Terrorism Tactics Outtakes (1996)
• Demos: 1993–1996 (2005)

Videos

• "Apocalyptic Sunshine Bootleg" (1994)
• "Toubabo Koomi" (1994)
• "Double Live Bootleg!" DVD (2002)

External links

• Official website
• Acid Bath at AllMusic