A Night of Firsts: Acid Bath + Ministry + Twin Tribes Make Their Spectacular Red Rocks Debuts

September 15th at Red Rocks Amphitheatre was a day of firsts. It was the first time Louisiana sludge legends Acid Bath played Red Rocks. It was the first time industrial giants Ministry played Red Rocks. It was the first time darkwave duo Twin Tribes played Red Rocks. And it was the first time I ever attended, or photographed, a show at Red Rocks.

My fascination with the place started more than four decades ago. On June 5, 1983, U2 played a rain-soaked concert at Red Rocks that was filmed and later released as U2 Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky. Footage from that night, particularly “Sunday Bloody Sunday” with Bono waving a white flag through the rain and mist, went into heavy rotation on MTV and became one of the defining images of the band’s early career.

I was only nine years old when I saw it, but it made a lasting impression on me. Not only did I become obsessed with U2, I vowed that someday I would see a show at that place. It took more than four decades, but I made it. And was it worth the wait.

Red Rocks is stunningly beautiful. The 9,525-seat amphitheatre sits in a natural space between its massive sandstone formations, with Ship Rock and Creation Rock towering on either side of the bowl. The amphitheatre officially opened in 1941 after years of construction, and the park was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2015. Then there’s the sound…

You hear people talk about the acoustics at Red Rocks so much that it starts to sound like part of the sales pitch. It isn’t. The place really does sound that good. Architect Burnham Hoyt designed the amphitheatre around the site’s natural acoustic properties, allowing the massive rock formations to become part of the experience rather than trying to overpower them.

I’ve heard a lot of bands in a lot of venues. I have never heard anything quite like this.

Up first was Denver’s own Cephalic Carnage, and judging by the number of their shirts I spotted in the crowd, the hometown band had plenty of support in attendance. Formed in Denver in 1992, Cephalic Carnage built its reputation on a technically intense mix of death metal, grindcore and experimentation.

Opening a five-band bill at 5 p.m. can be a rough assignment, but there were already plenty of people inside the bowl when Cephalic Carnage took the stage, and their hometown crowd was ready for them.

This was also where I encountered my first Red Rocks photo-pit problem.

Photographers were required to stay kneeling while shooting, something I physically cannot do with two total knee replacements. I tried shooting Cephalic Carnage anyway, but without being able to kneel I wasn’t getting the images I wanted, so I stopped midway through my shoot.

I then had to work with venue staff to get cleared for a chair accommodation in the photo pit. Unfortunately, getting everything sorted out took long enough that I missed photographing Richmond, Virginia doom metal band Windhand entirely.

Formed in 2008, Windhand released their self-titled debut in 2012 before signing with Relapse Records, which released Soma in 2013, Grief’s Infernal Flower in 2015 and Eternal Return in 2018. Vocalist Dorthia Cottrell’s haunting vocals over the band’s massive, slow-moving riffs have become one of the defining elements of their sound.

“Libusen,” “Old Evil” and “Orchard” were among the songs they played that evening, but by the time my accommodation was approved and I was finally able to get back into position with my camera, their set was over.

Not exactly how I envisioned the beginning of my first Red Rocks photo-pit experience. But now I had a photo-pit chair, so game on.

By the time Brownsville, Texas darkwave duo Twin Tribes hit the stage, the sun was dropping behind the rocks and smoke was filling the stage. It could not have been a better setting for them.

Twin Tribes formed in Brownsville in 2017 with Luis Navarro on vocals, guitar, synth and drum machines and Joel Niño, Jr. on bass, synth and vocals. Their sound pulls from darkwave, post-punk and coldwave, built around synths, drum machines, guitar and bass. The duo started out in DIY fashion and steadily worked their way from small clubs into increasingly bigger rooms and festival stages.

I first saw these guys play at tiny Rubber Gloves in Denton, Texas a few years ago. That performance put them squarely on my radar as a band to watch. A few months later, they played House of Blues in Dallas and became one of the first bands Music Fiends filmed an interview with.

Fast forward to a few months ago when I watched their performance at Sick New World in Las Vegas in front of a sea of people. I remember feeling both proud of them and genuinely happy for them.

Now they were playing Red Rocks. On the same bill as Acid Bath and Ministry, no less.

Niño took up every available inch of the stage during “Fantasmas,” theatrically dancing with his bass, while Navarro was more subdued but equally compelling. At one point Navarro stared so intently out into the audience that I actually turned around to see what he was seeing.

And then it hit me…Look where we are.

Whatever I was feeling looking out at that crowd and those rocks, I can only imagine they were feeling it multiplied by a thousand.

For the second song, Niño took up residence behind the synths, but that didn’t make him any less entertaining. He doesn’t just stand there pressing buttons. His entire body follows the music. His gestures, expressions and general performance become almost one with it, and he is extraordinary to watch.

“Monolith,” from the duo’s 2024 album Pendulum, with its driving bass and synths sounded absolutely massive inside the amphitheatre.

Check out the Twin Tribes concert photo gallery below:

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There were plenty of Twin Tribes fans in the crowd, several with their faces painted for the occasion, and judging from the reaction around me, there’s no doubt the band left Red Rocks with more than a few new ones. By the time their set ended, everyone was primed and ready for what was coming next.

Everyone’s favorite industrial-metal “uncle” was up.

After the band took their places, Al Jourgensen sauntered onto the stage and Ministry launched into “Reload,” the opening track from 1996’s Filth Pig.

Like a well-oiled machine, they sounded flawless. Before slipping into “Crumbs,” Jourgensen took off his guitar and tossed it over his head. I held my breath as it rotated through the air before landing perfectly in the waiting arms of his guitar tech.

See what I mean about a well-oiled machine? They’ve been doing this so long that even their elaborate guitar hand-offs are flawless.

During “Dead Guy,” Jourgensen repeatedly dragged a finger across his throat in an ominous throat-slitting gesture. His stage vibe has always amused me, in a good way. There’s something wonderfully sinister about Jourgensen onstage. He creeps around slightly hunched over and smiling, acting out the songs with exaggerated gestures like he’s quietly telling you a story you probably shouldn’t be hearing. Like Uncle Al is letting the audience in on a joke, except the joke *might* involve murder.

They pulled out “Scarecrow” for its first live performance since 2003. And a few songs later, Ministry unleashed the classics. “N.W.O.,” “Just One Fix,” “Stigmata” and “Thieves” came rapid-fire, back-to-back, and everyone was on their feet losing their minds.

I had climbed about halfway up the venue’s 193 steps to experience the show from the center of the bowl, and somehow the sound became even more impressive from there. When thousands of voices joined in during “Thieves,” the crowd chanting “Thieves! Thieves and liars!” echoed around the amphitheatre with an intensity that was almost deafening.

Check out the Ministry concert photo gallery below:

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Even amazing things eventually have to end. It was time to ding-a-lang-long my ding-a-lang-ling-long. “Jesus Built My Hotrod” closed Ministry’s spectacular first Red Rocks set.

Then came Acid Bath.

Despite being from my home state of Louisiana, Acid Bath somehow flew under my radar all these years, making this my first time seeing them.

Formed in the Houma, Louisiana area in the early ’90s, Acid Bath released only two studio albums during their original run: 1994’s When the Kite String Pops and 1996’s Paegan Terrorism Tactics. Their sound never fit neatly into one box, mixing sludge metal with doom, punk, psychedelic elements and moments that could turn unexpectedly melodic. After bassist Audie Pitre was killed in a traffic accident in 1997, the band came to an end.

For nearly three decades, that was it. Then Acid Bath returned, ending a 28-year absence from the stage and giving a hell of a lot of people their first opportunity to see these songs performed live. Me included.

My interest was piqued before they played a single note when I saw the photo rules. Gone was the usual “first three songs, no flash” rule that’s so standard you can even find it printed on T-shirts.

For Acid Bath? Songs three and four only. Okay then. The photographers queued up inside a long, narrow pathway between two metal barricades running along the right side of the stage. As we stood there waiting, a funny image formed in my head of all of us as bulls confined in a pen, waiting for somebody to open the gate. From this position, I watched the crowd during set opener “Tranquilized” and “Bleed Me an Ocean.”

Whenever the lights hit the audience, it gave me a completely different view of the show than I normally get from a photo pit. Thousands of people filled the bowl with the massive Ship Rock illuminated beside them. It sounded as if everyone there was belting out the lyrics, fists shooting into the air in such perfect unison that the whole thing might as well have been choreographed.

Then the third song started. Security stepped aside. Gate open. We charged the barricade.

“Venus Blue” gave us our first chance to photograph the band, and the song’s more melodic side made for a hell of a soundtrack to finally being turned loose with my camera. Dax Riggs’ vocals could move from delicate to ferocious, while the music filled every bit of that enormous space.

Then everything changed. For “The Bones of Baby Dolls,” the stage cleared except for Riggs and guitarist Mike Sanchez, and suddenly this massive metal show inside one of the most famous amphitheatres in the world became incredibly quiet.

What followed may have been the most beautifully haunting song I have ever heard performed live. Riggs’ voice was nothing short of amazing, every note hanging in the air while the crisp sound of the acoustic guitar bounced off the rocks around us. Red Rocks had already spent the entire evening showing off its acoustics, but this was different.

There was nowhere for that voice or that guitar to hide. And neither needed to. If I could bottle up sound, this would be it.

Then I noticed movement in the wings. The rest of Acid Bath were getting ready. They reappeared, plugged back in and joined the song, turning that sparse, haunting performance into something much bigger.

My four songs were over, but Acid Bath wasn’t even close. The remainder of the set pulled from both of the band’s studio albums, with “The Mortician’s Flame,” “New Death Sensation,” “Graveflower” and “Paegan Love Song” among the songs that followed. “Dead Girl” also made an appearance in its Agents of Oblivion arrangement. Finally, “The Blue” brought Acid Bath’s first Red Rocks performance to a close.

For a band whose original run ended almost 30 years ago, there was nothing about the reaction inside that bowl that felt like people were simply there for nostalgia. Some of these fans had waited decades to see Acid Bath. Others weren’t even alive when Paegan Terrorism Tactics came out.

Check out the Acid Bath concert photo gallery below:

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All of them knew those songs. And standing there beneath those rocks, looking at a stage I had wanted to see since I was nine years old, something finally sank in. I hadn’t just made it to Red Rocks. I just shot at Red Rocks.

For a night built around so many firsts, it somehow felt even bigger than the sum of them. Five very different bands took their turn between those massive rocks, from Denver’s own Cephalic Carnage kicking things off in the afternoon to Acid Bath closing it out under the Colorado night sky. Decades of music collided on one stage, longtime fans stood alongside people finally getting their first chance to see some of these bands, and Red Rocks proved exactly why artists and fans spend their lives wanting to get there. There are shows you remember because they were great. Then there are nights you know you just witnessed something special. This was both.

*Side note: The people of Morrison were very good to me! Shout out of thanks to Kendall for taking me on the hunt for a battery pack and dropping me off at the venue. And also to the kind man working at the Red Rocks Trading Post who let me charge my dying phone in his store…I wouldn’t have made it back to my hotel without that extra charge. I always say that music brings people together….it was good seeing Shannon, who I met at The Federal on my last Denver adventure when I photographed the Black Queen.

Catch Acid Bath on the Road…