In this bimonthly column, staff writer Doug Moore takes a very close look at extreme metal lyrics. Some will be serious, some will be silly, but they’ll all go under the microscope.
The term “fertile young minds” is popular for a reason. Creative people tend to produce their most daring ideas at the beginning of their careers. As they age, they lose their wildness and focus on presenting their thoughts more coherently. “Mature” works of art typically owe as much of their shine to polish as to brilliance.
Acid Bath stands as a testament to the value of immaturity. This pioneering NOLA sludge troupe mixed a mess of ingredients into their gumbo — death metal, doom, blues, and goth rock. The results were frequently lumpy and marred by amateurish mistakes. But so too were they brilliant. The band’s two early-90s albums inspired a generation of bands and retain a fan base to this day.
Members from Acid Bath would go on to other productive ventures — guitarist Sammy Duet continues to shred in Goatwhore, and vocalist Dax Riggs has an extensive solo catalog. But both musicians were at their most fearless on When the Kite String Pops, Acid Bath’s debut:
Dr. Seuss is dead
We await life
Dr. Seuss is dead
A cloud of flies obscure the sun
A stone is dropped
A dream undone
Ripples grow and ride the tide
The dead things crawls from deep inside
With its dying, sour breath
The burning smell of insect flesh
Hungry things in circles crowd
Around TVs turned up too loud
We are the dead next door
(Turned up too loud)
Where the dirty needles shine and litter the floor
(It’s too fucking loud)
Taste the light, inject the lord
(It’s too fucking loud)
I cut myself again because I’m so fucking bored
(It’s too fucking loud)
We are the dead next door
(It’s too fucking loud)
Where the dirty needles shine and litter the floor
(It’s too fucking loud)
Taste the light, inject the lord
(It’s too fucking loud)
I cut myself again because I’m so fucking bored
Motherfuck yeah!
We await life
Dr. Seuss is dead
The dream is swirling, I’m alone
Where the streets are paved with bone
Buildings with a hundred eyes
Watch me through the swarming flies
Behind shade pulled down tight
Things are growing without light
Hungry things in circles crowd
Around TVs turned up too loud
We are the dead next door
(Turned up too loud)
Where the dirty needles shine and litter the floor
(It’s too fucking loud)
Taste the light, inject the lord
(It’s too fucking loud)
I cut myself again because I’m so fucking bored
(It’s too fucking loud)
We are the dead next door
(It’s too fucking loud)
Where the dirty needles shine and litter the floor
(It’s too fucking loud)
Taste the light, inject the lord
(It’s too fucking loud)
I cut myself again because I’m so fucking bored
Motherfuck yeah!
The dream sea has been poisoned
Stoplight flashes me red
Innocence suffocated in its sleep
Dr. Seuss is dead
The dream sea has been poisoned
Stoplight flashes me red
Innocence suffocated in its sleep
Dr. Seuss is dead
At over six minutes, “Dr. Seuss Is Dead” sprawls. Like most sprawling things, it’s a little messy. Structurally, it lurches between two different feels — an oozing sludge verse and a bouncy death metal chorus. Lyrically, it’s all over the place. The seemingly irrelevant title and scattered metaphors defy my attempts at a unified interpretation.
But Acid Bath made loveable messes, and Dax’s lyrics are no exception. Though it’s a stretch to argue that “Dr. Seuss Is Dead” is ‘about’ anything, individual phrases practically explode off the page. “A cloud of flies obscure the sun” — what a vivid image! You can almost smell the “dead things” that drew so many carrion eaters. Perhaps those dead things are bugs themselves, and their reek is the “burning smell of insect flesh.”
The song later turns towards humanity, here reduced to beasts: “hungry things in circles crowd / around TVs turned up too loud.” This last phrase becomes a repeated stave in the chorus, which includes a number of Dax’s favorite Acid Bath-era tropes: intravenous drug use, self-mutilation, living corpses, and malevolent deities. The meaning remains unclear, but the words nonetheless rear themselves up and stride purposefully around in my consciousness.
It’d be easy, and not entirely inaccurate, to read these lyrics as a juvenile mishmash of creepy imagery. Acid Bath first recorded this song in 1993; Riggs, who was born in late 1973, was probably still a teenager when he wrote the lyrics. But teenagers often feel emotions more strongly than their elders, and that intensity came alive in Riggs’s Acid Bath material. Like a nightmare, “Dr. Seuss Is Dead” pairs narrative incoherence with lurid, gut-level horror. It’s amazing what fertile young minds can dream up.
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Good work. But you could have chosen a better song to explore.
Like Cassie or dead girl or tranquilized.