"It felt like my head was going to explode." Alligator murder, police raids and abandoned adult theatres: the story of the chaotic video shoot that helped make an underground 90s band cult legends

Acid Bath weren't cut out to be MTV stars. The Louisiana band with an obsession with death and murderers who mixed death metal, doom and blues into a sludgy package, they were about as underground as you could get in 1994. But that didn't mean they were without aspiration.

When the band released their 1994 debut When The Kite String Pops, they headed out into the swamps to make their first - and only - music video, for the song Toubabo Koomi (French Cajun for "Land of the White Cannibals"). Like a lot of things that happened to the band in the early 90s, it was a disaster. Speaking to Hammer earlier this year, bassist Sammy Duet and vocalist Dax Riggs shared how the video almost landed the band in hot water.

"There was no real agenda," admits bassist Sammy Duet. "The video director just said, 'Let's make a swamp video!' so we’d just go and hang out in the swamp, fuck around and film it."

Back at the camp that night, the band were sharing beers with the crew when one of the crew members suggested getting some alligators in the video.

"This guy grabs one and pulls it out of the water with his bare hands," Sammy says. "It wasn’t big – three or four feet, that’s a baby, basically – but it’s still a dangerous animal. We did some [camera] shots with it, but we could tell this alligator was pissed. But the guy wouldn't listen to us! He was like, ‘Nah it’s okay’ and picks it up, putting it on his shoulder like a cat! He’s like, ‘It just wants to survive man, it doesn’t want to bite you...'"

"And it bit his fucking face," Dax adds. "It nearly took his eye out."

Unfortunately, things then took an even worse turn. "The guy threw it down and shot it," Sammy says, shaking his head. "We didn’t know what to do man, that was fucking terrifying – time to leave the swamp!"

Heading back to civilisation, the band realised they still had more to shoot, including some live footage. But Acid Bath were hardly going to have shots of themselves in some enormodome venue. Instead, they had another type of establishment in mind - unintentionally almost starting the nu metal trend of getting arrested making music videos in the process.

"We’d decided to shoot in these abandoned porno theatres. What a great idea – shooting in a condemned building!" Sammy scoffs. "Word got out. Little by little people started showing up – and we had no permits, nothing. So we’re just in this abandoned building standing around with 400 or so people when the cops showed up. They were just like, ‘Y’all need to pack up and get the fuck out of here before we arrest you.’"

And still there was more to the tale. The band finally decamped to local bar The Wheelhouse where they'd play for cameras. But they hadn't accounted for just how many people wanted to be in the video.

"They’d got a little stage in the back and 400 people roll up," Sammy recalls. "The bar had a fucking great time – they were selling liquor hand over fist. But this was the middle of a Louisiana summer and the air conditioning in this building was not meant to cool down 400 people. I remember playing and it got so bad I stopped sweating. It felt like my head was going to explode. That was the making of the Toubabo Koumi video – alligators and massive dehydration.”

While Acid Bath never got say, a Beavis And Butthead assist to turn them into bona fide MTV stars like fellow Louisiana sludge metal legends Crowbar, their legacy has endured long after the band originally split in 1996. Reunited in 2025, they've since played sold out shows across the US and North America, and are eyeing up their first ever appearance in the UK and Europe next year as openers for System Of A Down.

"We were misunderstood," Sammy says. "We weren’t heavy enough for the extreme/death metal guys, but we were too heavy for the Pantera and Type O Negative people. We were caught in that weird spot."

Acid Bath play Manchester Academy on June 25 2026. The band support System Of A Down on July 13 and July 15.