Macabre - Grim Scary Tales

Published February 08 2011

*=Staff's pick	Locusta* Nero's Inferno The Black Knight Dracula The Big Bad Wolf Countess Bathory (Venom cover)* Burke And Hare Mary Ann* The Bloody Benders Lizzy Borden The Ripper Tramp From France Bella The Butcher The Kiss Of Death The Sweet Tender Meat Vendor

Genre	Death Metal	Nefarious/Corporate Death	Vocals
Tracks	14	Corporate Death	Guitar
Runningtime	50 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Hammerheart Records	Nefarious	Bass
Release	31 January 2011	Dennis The Menace	Drums
Country	USA	-	Keyboard
Producer	Geoff Montgomery
Similar artists	---

American "murder metallers" Macabre celebrate their 25 year anniversary as a band this year - which is a pretty impressive feat considering how they've never had any line-up changes whatsoever. Their new album, Grim Scary Tales, is released in celebration of this anniversary and every song portrays (with a large dose of morbid humour) an infamous murderer such as Nero, Elizabeth Bathory and Gilles Garnier.

Describing this album is no easy task. There are the pretty straight forward death metal songs, such asLocusta, The Kiss Of Death and a decent cover of Venom's Countess Bathory. Then there basically are the flat out insane songs where all kinds of different elements are thrown into the mix, such as traditional folk songs, children's tunes and power metal influences.

The vocals serve their purpose, intensifying the bizarre songs. However, I can't help butfeel that there's too much of the humorous singing styles andmore real growling than "town-crier" singing would have given a more nightmarish tone to the record, which I guess they were going for. The production also has its flaws, sounding okay during the softer and melodic parts but disappointing me greatly during the more aggressive songs - with the clean sound taking the edge off the brutality.

So how do all these strange combinations hold up? Well, in my opinion, they really don't. Macabre have somewhat of a cult following and I quite enjoy their ambitious concept album about Jeffrey Dahmer, released in 2000. Grim Scary Tales, however, strikes me as strange - just for the sake of being strange.

From what I hear, though,Macabre is a brilliant live act and for some reason I imagine that many songs from this record would be a lot of fun live and I can definitely recommend Grim Scary Tales if you want to hear something unique that will seriously screw with your head.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	8	4	4	4

Summary
4 chalices of 10 - Bjorn