Mushrooms, Crocodiles and the Swamp: How ‘TikTok’s Satanic Electronic Girls’ Revived Psychedelic Sludge Metal Acid Bath | metal

‘Isays singer Dax Riggs of the sudden TikTok-led renaissance of ’90s psychedelic sludge label Acid Bath. “Guitarist Sammy Dewitt adds: “In the front row, you’ll see an old fan and next to them is a 13-year-old kid singing all the words. What the hell is going on here?”

Formed in the Louisiana bayou in 1991 with oppressive swampy sounds and tales of drugs, death and decadence, Acid Bath deftly jumped from melodic grooves to bluesy licks and speed studies, sometimes in the same song. “The society here was quite dilapidated and unfair in many ways, but the beauty of the landscape was supreme,” Riggs says of the looming stagnant wetlands. Their eccentric, southern goth style burned out, before the death of bassist Audie Petrie in 1997, bringing their journey to an end.

A revival doesn’t seem likely: Acid Bath’s old label Rotten Records has kept Acid Bath off Spotify, apparently angered by poor pay, and has removed unauthorized videos from YouTube — prompting fans to upload their albums to less controversial streaming sites like Pornhub. But a change of heart in 2020 finally put Acid Bath on Spotify, generating millions of streams, as younger, algorithm-surfing listeners — “TikTok’s diabolical e-girls,” Duet calls them — plucked Acid Bath’s black sensibilities from relative obscurity into the mainstream. “It’s the Internet’s fault,” Riggs says. “On the Internet, the future and the past are the same thing.”

Buoyed by their post-breakup success, they regrouped in 2025, and this year will play their first ever UK gigs, including two nights in support of System of a Down at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. This 63,000-capacity venue couldn’t be further from the hot, sweaty rooms of their early years, when more than a handful of partygoers were considered successful.

Backed by heroic amounts of mind-altering material, the band’s original ’90s period was filled with chaos. When Acid Bath wasn’t locked out of their tour bus at a magic mushroom rave, the crew members in the video footage were being bitten by an alligator. There was “a lot of hassle” getting into New Orleans after dark, says DeWitt, as producer Spike Cassidy (of crossover thrash legends DRI) was drinking and making out with everyone. “He really wanted to wrestle you,” Riggs says.

“We were a little chemically enhanced in those days,” DeWitt admits.

“Our whole life was chaos,” Riggs adds.

Such chaos was witnessed firsthand by a Roadrunner A&R executive, who got wind of a loud band from the Bay and traveled to Louisiana. “There was a lot of violence [at our shows]“The crowd knew the Roadrunner was coming, so the fans went berserk, rushed the stage and grabbed the mic and shit,” says Riggs. They were saying: Sign this band! Tables were turned over and a waitress broke her leg. “Roadrunner wasn’t a fan of the whole thing,” Riggs adds. (No deal offered.)

But none of the chaos seemed to bother the band, who was “happy if we got a Taco Bell chili cheese burrito” at the end of the day, Riggs says. They just wanted to make the darkest music possible – which they easily achieved, thanks to Riggs’ poetic, psychotic lyrics about self-mutilation and murder, combined with the band’s menacing vocals.

Their unique style and intense psychedelic-based performances helped Acid Bath build a following, along with fellow Louisiana performers Crowbar and Eyehatgood. Despite operating under a small independent label, they have managed to sell tens of thousands of records, although they have never achieved much success on a national level. But by their second album, 1996’s Paegan Terrorism Tactics, creative differences began to emerge. “It was a weird time, where we had a lot of big ideas, but we started to crack, to split into our little factions,” Riggs says.

When guitarist Peter and his parents were killed by a drunk driver, the band lost one of their closest friends as well as their creative force. Acid Bath played a few more shows and then called it quits. The duo focused on their black thrash/death metal band, Goatwhore, while Riggs ramped up his vocals on projects like Agents of Oblivion.

But if it was Peter’s death that ended Acid Bath’s first chapter, it was another that helped reignite them. In 2024, keyboardist Thomas Viator died at the age of 55. When Sick New World Festival in Las Vegas reached out to Duet, asking what it would take to get Acid Bath back together, he thought about his own mortality and reached out to Riggs, who agreed it was time. “There’s a big importance to that, which is making sure your friend’s name shines,” Riggs says of the reunion. Although he, Duet and original guitarist Mike Sanchez agreed not to record new music under the name Acid Bath out of respect for their deceased friends.

They could never have guessed that their success after the breakup would multiply to the extent it has. “I had no idea it would be this big,” DeWitt says. “There’s a lot of psychological love pouring out of the audience,” Riggs adds. “It’s a wonderful overwhelming feeling.”