SilentScream213 One of the most eclectic Metal albums of its time, and certainly not something I expected from the Sludge Metal genre. About half the songs are true Sludge Metal, and even those are rife with other influences, namely Stoner and Avant-Garde Metal. Then there’s a bunch of straight Stoner Metal, some Acoustic Rock, Folky stuff… At times it really sounds like if First Utterance was a Metal album.

The music itself is pretty straightforward, it’s just combined in ways that make it less conventional. The lyrics on the other hand, are absolutely nonsensical and bizarre. The overall package is most certainly a decent representation of a mentally ill psycho going through drug addled hallucinations.

At over an hour long, the variety definitely helps differentiate the songs and retain interest. The album does a good job of switching between speedier, aggressive material and slower or gentler songs, keeping the pacing even. Unfortunately, while surprisingly consistent for the variety and length, it doesn’t have many great songs. Most of them are good with a few standouts like “Cassie Eats Cockroaches” and “Scream of the Butterfly,” but there’s nothing here I care to return to in the future.

UMUR "Paegan Terrorism Tactics" is the 2nd full-length studio album by US, Louisiana based metal act Acid Bath. The album was released through Rotten Records in November 1996 and it´s the successor to "When the Kite String Pops" from 1994. The two albums feature the same lineup. "Paegan Terrorism Tactics" would be Acid Bath´s last album release as they split-up in 1997 following the death of bassist Audie Pitre.

"When the Kite String Pops (1994)" was quite the diverse release and it was generally a hard release to put a label on, other than calling it a really, really heavy album with schizophrenic moments of stylistic insanity. The same pretty much applies to "Paegan Terrorism Tactics". It´s an incredibly heavy album which oozes a dark and depressive atmosphere, but also loads of frustration and aggression. The band are very well playing. They have an organic playing style and understand the importance of changing pace and dynamics throughout the album. Lead vocalist Dax Riggs is the real star here though. Not since the heyday of Layne Staley (Alice in Chains) have I heard a vocalist able to conjure up nightmarish opium dreams with an authentic intensity and great passion like Riggs does here. Damn he is a great singer with a powerful voice and the skills to use it to full effect. His lyrics are nicely abstract and gloomy too. Riggs sings both warm paatos filled clean vocal parts and distorted screaming "core" tinged parts. The latter provides the music with an extreme metal edge, but there are also some pretty raw riffs and rhythms featured on the album, which point in that direction.

"Paegan Terrorism Tactics" is overall a diverse and quite dynamic album though, and it can go from the most intense and crushingly heavy doomy grooves, to dark psychadelic tinged atmospheric parts, to semi-avant garde type section, to a track like "Dead Girl", which is best described as a bizarre singer/songwriter type track, featuring only vocals and acoustic guitar. Doom, sludge, stoner, alternative, punk, hardcore, and hard rock elements all combined into something pretty unique sounding.

One of the great assets of the album is how the tracks are constructed. While all tracks feature vers/chorus structures during their playing time, most go beyond that tried and true formula, and most feature unconventional structures and sections. The diversity of the material may initially come off as a bit stylistically inconsistent and maybe even confusing to the listener, but those ready for a sonic journey into the adventurous there is a good chance they will come away from the listening experience intrigued. Some maybe even excited...

"Paegan Terrorism Tactics" is not an easy listening experience despite parts of it being relatively accessible in nature. But the eclectic material is one of the major attractions of the album. Add to that brilliant musicianship and a powerful, organic, and raw sound production, and the album is upon conclusion a high quality release. A 4.5 star (90%) rating is deserved.

Warthur On their second album Acid Bath diversify their sound a little, delving into the sludge-adjacent portions of stoner rock and grunge here, getting a little mellow with their psychedelic side there, and generally offering a deliciously morbid meditation on death and the various religious distractions from it. The tragedy of Audie Pitre's death as the result of a drunk driver ramming the Pitre family car brought an end to Acid Bath, making the album's near-obsessive focus on death somewhat eerie in retrospect, but even if you aren't aware of that the album's morbid, downbeat tone is brilliantly realised and will stand out to any listener.

Warthur Boasting Jon Wayne Gacy cover art and an incredibly appropriately dirty and sludgy production, Acid Bath's debut album offers up crushingly heavy sludge metal whose subject matter, as you might guess from the cover, combines the jocular with the morbid. (Dr. Seuss Is Dead is outright terrifying.) Dax Riggs' vocals can take the strangest subject matter and make it sound deadly serious, especially in the context of the doleful sonic territory explored by lead guitarists Sammy Duet and Mike Sanchez. At points it's almost psychedelic, a bad trip into dark territory. As far as the 1990s pioneers of sludge metal go, Acid Bath certainly don't deserve to be overlooked.

UMUR "When the Kite String Pops" is the debut full-length studio album by US, Louisiana based metal act Acid Bath. The album was released through Rotten Records in August 1993 and rather controversially features cover artwork painted by Illinois serial killer John Wayne Gacy, while he was in prison waiting to be executed for his crimes. Acid Bath was a relatively shortlived act who was active between 1991 and 1997 and released two studio albums in that time. The band broke up as a consequence of the death of bassist Audie Pitre, who was killed in a car accident involving a drunk driver.

Stylistically the music on "When the Kite String Pops" is really hard to describe in a suiting manner, because you´ll find everything from stoner rock/metal, sludge metal, hard rock, alternative rock/metal, thrash (even a few death) metal leanings, doom metal, punk/hardcore, and other stylistic elements thrown together to form a very original sounding music style. The eclectic songwriting approach is not completely unlike what you´ll hear on a System of a Down album, but that´s how far the comparison goes.

The music is dark, filthy, raw, and at times ultra heavy (check out the sludgy doom metal riffing on "Dr. Seuss Is Dead"), featuring both clean and distorted raw vocals. Dax Riggs is an incredibly skilled vocalist and his sedated "Layne Staley meets Jim Morrison" type clean vocals and aggressive screaming ditto are delivered with fierce passion and conviction. The band are exceptionally well playing, especially considering that "When the Kite String Pops" is a debut album, and they really manage to make the listener feel their anger, frustration and sadness through their playing and through the adventurous songwriting.

Another asset on "When the Kite String Pops" is the well sounding, hard hittin´ and raw sound production, which brings out the right dark and powerful emotions in the music. The album is 69:10 minutes long and features 14 tracks, and while such a long playing time isn´t always a success, this is one of the exceptions to that rule, as it´s an entertaining and ever changing album throughout the playing time. Overall it´s just a really intriguing and unique sounding release and it´s nearly a mandatory listen for the open minded metal listener. A 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.