Acid Baby Jesus

Bzzzzzzzz. Warble. Jangle. Drone drone.

Haling from Athens, Greece, ladies and gentlemen, Acid Baby Jesus. Although they could be from the 1960’s, original members of the Alice Cooper Band, or Mars - they are not (those things aren’t possible, well I guess they coulda been in Cooper’s band, but they’d be real old and they aren’t).

The Acid Babies’ new self-titled LP on Slovenly Recordings is a psychedelic calamity worthy of Album of the Year honours (what year, you ask - any year). I missed these cats in Memphis (no pffts, rolled eyes, head shakes, or other forms of disapproval - I know, I should have gone), but I can imagine (and was told) that these hip young fellers from Greece can really play the rock ‘n’ roll.

The songs range from extra fuzzed up classic era Brian Jonestown Massacre meets Black Lips (“Mezmerized”), to 60’s floor stomper via “Fingerpainting”. “Tyrannosaurus Rex” - dinosaur on a cruise ship, need I say more? “Old Fart” jangles up a psych storm (you know that 60’s plink-a-plink rhythm - yeah, that one). “Homo Sapiens” is simply wicked (picture a Victorian dandy saying that); wicked in a Thee Mighty Caesars peak era way.

Look (deep into my eyes). What I’m getting at is if you love garage/beat/psych/stomp/Stones, the Acid Babies’ new LP is for you (and you, and you, and you….). - GET BENT

Grecian psych-punks Acid Baby Jesus jumped onto our radar with a killer EP for Slovenly Records and they've completely blown any expectations away by following it up with their new album, the sparsely titled LP. The album ropes in quite a few sounds sympathetic to RSTB's ears, crawling from gnarled sci-fi punk that could give Human Eye a run for its money, to slow swagger spacedust blues hopped up on mercury swirls and lead poisoned pacing. Each listen opens this one up a little more, cracking new influences and pulling out into a wide angle focus that snaps their ups and downs into a Monet-like clarity when taken as a whole. Its been a while since a debut hit us this hard and its definitely recommended that you wrap your heads around this one soon. Also available from the crew at Slovenly.
- Raven Sings the Blues: Indie Rock News

By Brad Schmale
Hailing from an ancient country rich in historical attributes, yet poor economically, Greek garage punks Acid Baby Jesus are the perfect by-product of their environment, spawning twisted grooves to revolt to, much like England in the '70s during the first wave of British punk. Although lighter on the attitude and heavy on the psychedelics, Acid Baby Jesus create fuzzed-out pop ditties that sound like something that escaped from mad scientist Brian Eno's lab after crossbreeding the Cramps with the Black Lips. The reverb-saturated "Homo Sapiens" is a guitar-driven hell ride, as the same bluesy riff pounds ruthlessly, nearly bludgeoning its listener, while the sickly '50s shimmy of "I'm a Baby" is as danceable as self-deprecation can possibly be. The album's strongest effort, "Tooth to Toe," perfectly balances dreary lyrics with sugary harmonies, providing a hint of light in an otherwise dark song. This is an album for those who want to experience their music rather than just listen to it and Acid Baby Jesus's sophomore release is one hell of a trip.
(Slovenly) - Exclaim.ca

Acid Baby Jesus' "Hospitals" is a surf-inspired garage opus that's as heavy on distortion and delay as it is on vibed-out, chant-along vocals. In other words, exactly what you'd expect from a band hailing from the marble mothership of Western civilization: Athens "yogurt, not peaches" Greece. No? After comfortably treading in some insidiously catchy, guitar-driven waters, the track launches into a cacophony that will either suck you down to the ocean floor or leave you gazing at the shoes you've been tapping to the beat for the past two minutes. Lifejacket not included. Shout out to Rich Moms for the tip. --Ric Leichtung, International Tapes - Ric Leichtung of Pitchfork, Ad Hoc, and International Tapes

Friday night, we hit up Death By Audio for an unofficial party put on by Hardly Art and WUSB. Following a lackluster performance from a bored-looking Colleen Green (who, to be fair, is better on her album), Acid Baby Jesus cranked the energy in the room to a fever pitch. Often pegged as Athens, Greece's answer to the Black Lips, the guys of ABJ mix blues, psych, and punk, but not in equal measures. Their ghoulish cries echoed the Misfits, while singer Noda's fast and harsh delivery sounded vaguely MacKaye-ish at times, and aggressively un-P.C. lyrics like "you're gonna get a kick in the cunt!" seemed passed down straight from G.G. Allin. When Noda lit some American currency on fire and threw it into the crowd, it read simultaneously as a timeless act of youthful rebellion and a timely nod to the upheavals currently shaking their country and, to a lesser degree, ours. - The Village Voice

Athenian garage punks Acid Baby Jesus might be the unlikely next big thing in blown out noise. The outfit formed three years ago and their just-released self-titled album is out now on Slovenly records and soaking up shine from in-the-know blogs like Get Bent! The LP was preceded by the woozy Hospitals seven-inch, which got them some initial international blog love.

The album is a big, loud, lysergic debut that’s inviting comparisons to the Black Lips and the 13th Floor Elevators. It’s fitting that the band’s press photos and album art show them submerged in water, because their music is drenched in reverb and drowning in fuzz, but underneath it all there’s a solid structure of raw psychedelia in the school of freaky Americans like Woven Bones and Black Angels. But these Greek kids go a little deeper and dreamier.

“Tyrannosaurus Rex” is like a Black Angels droner, but instead of a bleak meditation on war you get perplexing lyrics about a girl with dinosaur hands. “Tooth to Toe” deals with debt and brokeness. Splashed with color and blessed with the warped dynamics of The Beets, it’s one of the coolest tracks on the album, in no small part because of the high-pitched, Muppetey la-la chorus. But the pièce de résistance is “Homo Sapiens.” It’s like the soundtrack to a roaring party at a carnival haunted house designed by Captain Beefheart — the kind where the floor keeps shifting back and forth.

The members of Acid Baby Jesus will tell you the somewhat musically isolated scene in Greece can’t be defined, the bands are all too different. That may be the case, but the quartet is riding on top of their scene and becoming its garage rock ambassadors. Traveling the punk houses, DIY venues, and dive bars of North America and Europe, ABJ rocks and rolls with the heavyweight likes of the Black Lips, Davila 666, and Xray Eyeballs. Watch for them coming to your town, and, in the meantime, sample the low-budget surrealism of their video for “It’s on Me.” - MTV IGGY