Review by Mandeep Arora on June 11, 2024.

Paegan Terrorism Tactics may not enjoy the lofty status of its bigger brother When the Kite String Pops but I reckon it’s the better album of the two. It's more circumspect to its sibling's lewd and crazy antics, yet there's a seriously sinistrous and enigmatic air about it; a pretty dark record when you go beyond scratching the surface but one that sounds refined and somewhat dignified at face value. Comprising some searing past resonances and overlaid with some fresh and relatively amiable music, it seems like the perfect equilibrium of old and new, extreme and modest...

A meeker demeanour facilitates more variety, since songs now range from somewhat fast to mostly medium paced and even hauntingly slow as achieved on New Death Sensation and Dead Girl. You cannot limit it to a specific genre, it's too diverse for that, but to these ears, the riffing style veers more towards doom metal than it does towards sludge, two of the band's primary styles. These towering riffs seem a bit inspired from the mighty Sabbath and the guitars have an all-consuming effect, the softer parts very sombre, and everything coming together to impart a feeling that’s gloomy yet comforting. While mostly reigning in these confines, it also slumps into the dark, cold vales of Norway - Locust Sprawling's outro is a seemingly perfect fit for Darkthrone’s Under a Funeral Moon and sounds more trve kvlt black metal than actual trve kvlt black metal. It's also one of the faster songs and seems almost unsuited for an album that's more easy-going in its approach. Not a wise statement to make for an Acid Bath record, is it?

Just as it's rewarding to make such unhurried progress, so there's something enormously satisfying about revelling in the diversity of multiple song styles. The melodies have a stronger presence and the guitar solos are more fleshed out, accompanying and elevating the rhythm sections. I don't think keyboards have been at the forefront of the band's sound before but you hear them in a prominent setting on Graveflower particularly, a ballad with some heavier sections that sound quite atmospheric and hypnotising. There are two more deep-dyed acoustic ballads in New Death Sensation and Dead Girl; I think Acid Bath does fantastic ballads as evident in Scream of the Butterfly before and these only validate the band's range and talent at making slow and dark yet deeply soulful music. New Death Sensation relies on percussion and vocal melodies for added drama and is one of the most haunting and depressing tunes I've listened to, like Opeth meets Katatonia, and Dax Riggs' vocal performance on it is of the highest quality, always leaving me awestruck, speechless and teary-eyed when it plays 30 or so minutes into the album. Dead Girl, on the other hand, is purely acoustic and the most grungy song here - a simpler composition that accomplishes a haunting effect mostly from a lyrical standpoint. The song placement is such that you feel as though the ballads are snatching you away, gently so, from the chaotic effect of the angrier songs and cocooning you in a thought-provoking realm before pushing you into the epicenter of the chaos again, which is the angry songs.

Melodic overtones take center stage in lieu of the shrouded undertones and a robust bottom-end, which makes for a warmer overall sound. Like everything else, the mix is tamer too and bass isn't as nasty as its elder sibling but still perceptible enough to be heard in most of the sections and especially sounding tasty on Diäb Soulè. I appreciate that I can clearly hear nearly every instrument and not one at the expense of the other. The drums are brawny and tight with Jimmy Kyle behind the set. You hear him pick up the tempo on choruses and slow down for the gentler sections, also displaying his deft footwork at some tasty double bass while he vigorously thrashes the snares and cymbals. The vocals are slightly louder in the mix but that's to emphasise the dramatic effect of the melodies. While mostly clean, they also switch between death metal growls and a bit of black metal shrieks. The cleaner ones particularly are very controlled and consistent, gut-wrenching at times, and deeply evocative on the slower songs; I knew Dax Riggs was pretty good on the previous album but did not expect him to delve into the deeper confines of my soul this time and garner such strong emotional reactions out of me. His vocals are one of the most crucial and somewhat overlooked factors that add to this album's sublime character and sound.

Of course, you cannot not mention the lyrics when reviewing an Acid Bath record, for they have always been at the core of the band's identity and appeal. More so than the sound and atmosphere, it’s the lyrics this time that will give this away as an Acid Bath record. The sound may have a diaphanous veil of refinement about it but the lyrics embrace the same old vileness synonymous with the band. Sure, they are a little less uncouth comparably but still scream eccentricity and genuine shock. Also, this may just be me and my imagination but I think they depict a journey or expedition of sorts, a quest to uncover the deep-seated mysteries and secrets of the world, of multiple dark and sinistrous events occurring in different settings and chilling encounters with some truly bizarre people. I don't know if it's the narration on Old Skin and Ode of the Paegan that imparts this feeling or the seemingly conversational lyrics on Dead Girl or the very transcendental nature of New Death Sensation, but I do get a strrong impression these songs are somehow connected to one another in an inexplicable way - tracks 5, 6 and 7 flow beautifully into each other and seem like one intact composition of varying mood shifts.

For the sake of this review, I revisited Paegan Terrorism Tactics after a very long time and boy was I mesmerised all over, once again. It was a beautifully satisfying and warming feeling, like meeting a very close friend after ages and sharing nothing but genuine love and appreciation. Even though it embraces a more accessible and modest sound, it's still a pretty big hit with the otherwise rigid metal audience. How can it not be? It's such a fantastic album that displays the band's potential and versatility as super-talented musicians who forayed into a newer realm of sound and still nailed the execution. Rarely, if at all, do you come across something that's irksome or out of place, everything else leaving an everlasting impression on you, not because of shock value but because of quality musicianship. It's a fitting conclusion to the band's elite discography and short yet celebrated career, forever cementing their position as one of the most unique, and greatest, metal bands of all time.

rating: 9.5 out of 10

Review by Benjamin on June 11, 2024.

Two years after Acid Bath made waves in the metal underground with their sensational debut When The Kite String Pops, they released this, their second and final album Paegan Terrorism Tactics. After courting controversy with the John Wayne Gacy artwork sported by their previous album, the band adorned the sleeve of the follow-up with a Jack Kevorkian painting. In some respects, despite again choosing to be visually represented by a convicted murderer, the choice of Kevorkian actually demonstrates a growing maturity – Kevorkian’s conviction being for assisting the suicide of a terminally ill man, rather than the senseless killing of innocent victims. This increased level of sophistication is also evident in the band’s music, with Paegan Terrorism Tactics offering a more focussed and sharper set of songs than the debut, but without sacrificing any of the multi-valent extreme metal genre-hopping that characterises their sound.

The album opens with the hugely impactful quasi-title track ‘Paegan Love Song’. Boasting the band’s biggest and perhaps best riff, the track is a musical tsunami of devastating power, annihilating everything in its path, Dax Riggs’ searing vocals slicing through the supremely thick guitar tone that will be familiar to fans of When The Kite String Pops. The aforementioned riff is relatively simple in structure, but the band develop this monolithic groove in numerous subtle directions throughout the first half of the song – Jimmy Kyle’s ever-excellent drum arrangements constantly mutating through complex double-kick patterns, and the band experiment with occasionally layering additional rhythm guitars to thicken the sound, as well as injecting short bursts of energising chord sequences which propel the song forward. Riggs’ haunting and chilling lyrics, recounting the band’s own experiences with psychedelics and opiates, add an additional grimy ingredient to a complex recipe, and the twisted nursery rhyme feel of “You scream, I scream, everybody screams for morphine” queasily and memorably subverts the listener’s expectations, elevating the song into a true anti-anthem for the damned, even before the Type O Negative-style doomy dirge that dominates the second half of the song emerges from a howl of feedback to complete a magnificent epic that seems to contain a lifetime within its exhausting six minute runtime.

As the album continues through song after brilliant song, Acid Bath demonstrate their class by pulling off the difficult trick of working through a range of styles (albeit within the milieu of rock, metal and punk), and offering fascinating variation, but at all times sounding exactly like Acid Bath. It shows an admirable strength of vision to be able to so effectively bend and shape a plurality of influences and inspirations into a singular, identifiable and cohesive whole, and that Acid Bath managed to execute their sound so successfully, despite being dissolute in so many other ways is quite remarkable.

It is to Acid Bath’s immense credit that so consistently high is the quality of composition, that it is difficult to single out any particular song as the album’s peak – instead the album is a mountain range, a vista of pinnacles stretching as far as the eye can see, each one offering a different and unique perspective, but stunningly impressive when viewed as a whole. On any given listen, attention could be drawn to the almost celebratory classic metal riff buried midway through the glacial doom of ‘Graveflower’, the industrial breakdown and clanging mechanical percussion embellishing the climax of the otherwise brutally death metal ‘Locust Spawning’, or the triumphant d-beat hardcore chugging of ‘New Corpse’. The next, however, might focus instead on the petrifying, and raw sludge of ’13 Fingers’, or the merauding riff and coruscating vocal of ‘Diäb Soulé’. Paegan Terrorism Tactics bears the unmistakeable mark of many a great album, and continues to reveal itself many years and listens after its initial release.

Although Acid Bath’s career was disappointingly short, the result is a back catalogue that is close to perfect. More than that, notwithstanding a hidden track which appears after 20 minutes of silence, the album, and indeed the band’s discography as a whole, ends on a fitting bittersweet note, with the calm after the storm of ‘Dead Girl’. A grungy acoustic ballad that in parts recalls Nirvana’s more maudlin moments, it also offers a clear signpost for Riggs’ musical output post-Acid Bath. As the song is transformed during its second half by a modulation into major key, the song resonates with a modicum of hope, the suggestion of possible redemption following the crazed nihilism of two albums worth of frightening sludge. Somewhat underappreciated during their all too brief existence, Paegan Terrorism Tactics is the crowning glory of a unimpeachable brace of underground metal classics, ensuring that their legacy will only continue to grow in their absence.

Rating: 9.1 out of 10

First published here: https://alifetimeofmusic537956501.wordpress.com/2020/06/09/acid-bath-paegan-terrorism-tactics/