Live Report: Acid Bath, Crowbar, EYEHATEGOD and Whores

 I meant to write this up last weekend but life got in the way. Don't worry. I'm not going anywhere. Just had a busy week.


So Acid Bath... Well, I've been a fan since randomly picking up "When the Kite String Pops" in 1994. That year was my biggest leap into extreme metal as it also represents about the time I got deeply into Black Metal as well. I never got the chance to see them in their prime. I was very glad to hear they were playing some shows and hoped for a local gig here. And sure enough, I was blessed with a stacked show.

But could Acid Bath 2026 live up to the hype? Let's find out.


Whores- Look this just isn't my thing. They really just sound like Helmet to me. It's noise rock. If you like Helmet, you'll probably like these guys. Live they were fun. You could tell they were having a good time. The bassist spent the whole time bouncing around the stage. And they were incredibly happy to be playing for us. They put on a great show so if noise rock is your thing you should definitely check them out.

EYEHATEGOD- I've seen these New Orleans gents a few times and they never disappoint. Same was true hear. The drummer pounded out doom grooves and the bassist held down that low end. Jimmy slammed into bluesy down tuned riff after riff. And Mike caterwauled his broken heart out about all sorts of horrific things. They truly captured their essence in this show and gave a great and angry performance. Always a recommend from me.

Crowbar- Probably the most accessible of the southern sludge bands.  Crowbar got up and plowed through a handful of songs reveling in the slow feedback drenched riffs. Hearing them live, I get why they were the first of these bands to get popular. Even though I'm not really familiar with them there were a number of songs I could sing along with. And Kirk sounded great especially since he had some sort of upper respiratory infection at the time of the show. Anyway they definitely put on a solid show. And even ended with my favorite song, "All I Had (I Gave)". 

Acid Bath- So, finally, the moment came. I was ridiculously excited. So how did this older version hold up? Pretty damn good. First Dax sounded great. He still has this great ability to make even out of tune singing sound good. He stood there in sunglasses barely moving and talking to the audience but somehow radiating everything that Acid Bath is; A Southern Gothic Psychedelic Black Nightmare. Lemmy once used that phrase to describe his time in Hawkwind but I think its far more appropriate here. There was a screen behind them that the other bands used to show their names but with Acid Bath it became a screen that perfectly reflected the music.  Dark visuals collided with twisting bright colors perfectly accentuating the songs and the performances. They played pretty much every song I could hope for them to play. This is definitly a show worth taking in. The only thing that wasn't great was Sammy and his cringy banter. It was out of place and felt really weird in this performance with this band.  I know they said there are no plans to record new music but there's a side of me that would be interested to hear what they would come up with 30 years later. Either way, we got a piece of American metal history and a great show to boot. 

So thank you for reading. Should have a couple of reviews up this coming week. Still banging along on this blog thing. Thanks for hanging out and bang the head that doesn't bang!