In more than a couple of ways, the re-emergence of Acid Bath is following in the deep footprints of when Sleep shook off their retirement from the stage. Both were legendary Metal bands whose careers hit a sudden stop in the ’90s.
Acid Bath – Napalm Death – Pig Destroyer – Primitive Man – Final Gasp
Roadrunner, Boston – 30 May 2026
Words And Photography: Tim Bugbee
In Sleep’s case, it was getting dropped from London Records while their Dopesmoker recordings sat dormant and ignored for years. For Acid Bath, it was the tragic death of bass player Audie Pitre in a car crash with his parents. On returning to performing, both bands started out by playing select shows and festival appearances before doing more extensive touring.
Acid Bath have not quite hit that second phase yet, still playing sporadic shows targeted at markets they have not seen in decades. The bonus to this approach is that their tour dates are not just cookie-cutter affairs, and each date has some prime hand-picked talent as support.
Boston hit the jackpot, and it felt like a one-day festival rather than just a run-of-the-mill show. Joining the NOLA quintet were names like Napalm Death, Pig Destroyer, Primitive Man and local faves Final Gasp, all bands who are no strangers to shouldering their own headlining tours.
With this confluence, they were able to pretty much pack the cavernous Roadrunner, a venue with a capacity of 3,500. With such a lineup of uncompromising Metal, it was cool to see all of them on a large stage instead of the mid-sized or smaller venues they would normally play.
Final Gasp’s previous hometown show at the Middle East upstairs had about the same square footage as the Roadrunner stage.
I was lucky enough to catch Acid Bath’s final show of 2025 in Chicago, so I knew that Dax Riggs had lost none of his vocal talent. He is capable of honeyed lines like Layne Staley, but he can flick that switch on demand to bark out acidic and corrosive Hardcore shouts and screams as needed.
With the clarion call of Black Sabbath booming over the PA before the band got onto the purple-bathed stage, anticipation was high, both for the grizzled veterans who were lucky enough to see them back in the original phase and for the much larger contingent who would be witnessing this grand magus for the first time.
Props to them for changing up the set list a bit from the 2025 shows, but it did hurt a bit that I wouldn’t hear Scream Of The Butterfly again, a Southern Gothic song heavily draped in Spanish moss so thick you cannot fight your way through it.
They kept the distorted spoken word bits of Bonus Poem and Old Skin that at first sounded like the voice-overs from The Virgin Suicides, but kept their set tight, in control and entirely on point. Sammy Duet and Mike Sanchez kept the guitars loud, smeared and oozing with pain and atonement.
The minor key Venus Blue was dedicated to Pitre, and that was a pretty heavy moment. Riggs kept centre stage like Mark Lanegan, motionless, mic stand gripped tight like it was a lifeline, and funnelled all his energy into hurling notes out of that gifted throat.
Acid Bath played just a scant hour, but closing with the scabrous The Blue was a true highlight, Dax screaming, “I know you, you’re nothing, you’re so small/you’re fucking nothing, nothing at all.”
Yet everyone left the building energised, knowing the exact value of their self-worth. The power of Metal prevails once again.
Napalm Death
Napalm Death are still missing original member Shane Embry in the live show, but Barney and company did not let their energy slip one bit, blasting out noise-filled Hardcore bombs left and right.
“We’re gonna play some unabashedly noisy shit tonight. Not as much as usual but still plenty of them.” They did cut about eight songs from their setlist, but made them all count, even the micro songs of C.S and You Suffer, which is recognised by Guinness as the shortest song ever recorded.
“Those two are the absolute fucking best for you,” remarked Barney. They closed with a virtually unrecognisable cover of Dead Kennedys’ Nazi Punks Fuck Off, and in this current political climate, everyone should scream those words at top volume in public every single day.
Pig Destroyer
Pig Destroyer brought more noise to the proceedings, with singer JR Hayes repeatedly telling the crowd that he thanked us for putting up with them.
No apologies necessary, this brand of Death Metal/Grindcore/Hardcore was virtually indistinguishable from song to song to me, but it did not matter, getting hit over the head with a sledgehammer song after song never felt better.
Keyboardist Alex Cha took it as his personal mission to banish the image of keyboardists as dorky figures who moved their fingers and maybe arms and heads occasionally. He would whip his hair around like George Fisher, lift his entire keyboard and stand over his head, and then later grab an inflatable raft and do some crowd boating and meet new friends in the back of the room.
Primitive Man
Do you want it loud? Do you want it slow? Do you want the sound to be so oppressive that you gasp for air? Welcome to Primitive Man. It is like being crushed by a pile of sand, grain after grain, until you cannot move or breathe.
Fans of Swans can relate, but Gira has a push and pull and dynamics to that great crush of sonic destruction. Primitive Man is like getting caught in a molasses flood, steady, unyielding, and destroying everything in its path, dynamics be damned.
Final Gasp
Final Gasp had the pleasure of playing by far the largest room they had ever played in their hometown, and they made the most of the opportunity.
Their newest and second record on Relapse (New Day Symptoms) came out in late February and shows the band continuing their exploration of goth, punk and Metal and combining them into their own potent flavour.
Singer Jake Murphy has a great voice, and the band brings power and finesse when needed. Do you like Killing Joke, Unto Others, or Beastmilk? If that box was ticked yes, you need to check these guys out.
