Sinister Slaughter

(It's been a while since I've wrote a music review. But a stormy afternoon is perfect for Macabre...)
Erratic vocals and furiously paced guitar set the scene for Sinister Slaughter by Macabre...

I won't comment on the truthfulness of the lyrical content because I'm not that well studied in killers/murderers, only having a casual interest in them really. But from what I get it's clear that they've done their homework and you have to commend them for that. I'm pretty late to the party for a review, having only heard of Macabre a few years ago through the legendary Dahmer album. Later on while exploring their catalog more I came across this one. I don't necessarily like either album more than the other, I just for some reason found this one easier to write about.

The first thing people notice about this band is often the high pitched vocals. I find myself on the border of liking them and sometimes finding them comical; (But then being appropriate for the subject matter of psychopathy...) For most of the album I do thoroughly enjoy them, only in the first song do I find them too weird and forth-putting. Even though I sort of dislike this track, I still find it interesting and appropriate for an album opener. When I hear the high wails it reminds me a lot like the vocalist of Impetigo and DSBM band Silencer had a baby, yet only taking the best genes of each and leaving behind the worst. I like how they use very common language instead of trying to go for the overly-intelligent route some bands do with the anatomically correct gore metal sub-genre. This keeps the songs easy to remember all the lyrics for and makes you want to revisit the material more.

One of the strangest things about Macabre in general, (not just this album,) is their use of nursery rhyme type melodies. I'm not well versed on what each of the nursery rhyme type songs they use in their playing are titled, but I can recognize them when they're there. For example : 20 seconds in on the third track "Sniper In the Sky": "Charles Whitman was the school tower hitman Charles Whitman shot at people and hit them, " is chanted in the style of a nursery rhyme. (For the love of God why can't I remember the name of it?) The guitar also plays a metal version of the melody and the drums play to make them more aggressive. Another good example is about halfway in the track Zodiac. The nursery rhyme thing I'm speaking of comes to its penultimate climax in Vampire of Dusseldorf, (in my opinion,) being track 16 and the most playful one. It starts off with a harpsichord intro,( I think,) and then later the guitar plays the same thing in a more metal mode while the very catchy lyrics spout, "I'm gonna strangle you and I'll slit your throat too I love to see your blood run, that's the thing that makes me cum I'm gonna kill you just because I want to I'm the Vampire of Dusseldorf and I will cut your life short."

When I try to think of what metal bands they drew their inspiration from, rather than getting a singular band, I get they drew inspiration just from whole genres instead. (I hear death metal. thrash, a little bit of stoner/doom. A touch of bouncy surfer rock. Punk and drum corps along with sometimes carnival music. Western gunslinger acoustic guitar, flamenco and classical guitar as well as the nursery rhyme melodies).
If there are some bands they do remind me of, they are probably Exhumed and Canadian grind-core band Dahmer. Exhumed because one vocalist operates low while the other operates high & Dahmer in their subject matter and murderer worship.)

The pacing of the length of songs keeps the album flowing at a rate that doesn't become monotonous. Songs range from under a minute up to almost 4 minutes. This diversity helps the album feel alive, which again contrasts the theme of murder/death in a way some people might not think about. Even though none of the songs are too long, the album still feels lengthy at about 41 and a half minutes and 21 tracks. (There's certainly a lot of flesh to consume here.) One might be more comfortable listening to it in sections and chunks rather than all at once, though I do feel like the album offers a lot more when played in its entirety.

There's a nice flamenco-style-acoustic-guitar intro on track 6 that stands out on its own with some virtuoso type playing that then breaks away into their murder metal death grind style in a plodding battery of drums. Even though they often have these sections that are not metal based, you can hear the talent of the musician and the ability to make them work in the subject content and in a metal way, (which can be really hard to do without coming across as too cheesy.) To be fair it does sometimes sound cheesy. (Though not so much this album as their others.) Even though there is the presence of the virtuosic guitar, it's evident that they don't take themselves too seriously when at the end of "Is It Soup Yet?" the song concludes with them shouting "It tasted pretty damn good!"

One of my favorite things about this band is the drum solos. They give him ample time to bash the skins and it does not disappoint me as a self proclaimed drummer myself. The drumming is lively and not overly robotic. To me it sounds like he was musically trained in school, though I might be wrong. The sounds of the double kick drum set the tempo more often than not and a really thin ride cymbal helps keep time along with the snare adding some attack. Songs often will change from mid tempo to fast or faster while retaining the same feel.

I'll just abruptly end this here as I don't want to ramble on for much longer because I keep thinking ahead of myself. In conclusion this is a great addition for anyone's collection that's hyper into murderers, this band, or quirky death metal. It's strong in concept and shows some really strong playing both in a fun and catchy punk metal style and being more technical sometimes like during the guitar solos. Some songs I like less than others but the ones I like heavily outweigh the ones I don't and will often have a riff or two that I really like to make up for listening to the part that I don't. The whole package sounds very concise and fits together in theme, but might be outshined in concept by Dahmer; as its hyper focus on the life and death of Jeff epitomizes the murder worship.

I often wonder if the addition of a fourth member on rhythm guitar would help or hinder their playing and song writing and I'm kind of glad they've stayed a 3 piece with all original members this long. With no lineup changes the band has really solidified their sound and are almost instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with any of their music.

Macabre is one weird-ass band. I can’t think of any band that sounds like it. If you hear Macabre, you know pretty much immediately that it is Macabre.

This is part of what makes this band so great. Despite the use of similar techniques and having similar influences as so many other bands, the band has managed to craft an oddball, distinctive, slightly off-kilter sound. I am not even sure how to categorize this band, if I really had to. Is this a death metal band? Kind of, but not necessarily. Although the band was referred to as a thrash band back when Grim Reality came out, I don’t really think that is accurate either. I generally dislike bands trying to create their own genre name, as it usually comes from bands that don’t really stand out from other bands, yet they want to be known as this really specific thing, “We play Simian Puke Grind, not death metal or grindcore!” However, with Macabre, it does seem deserved and rightfully earned: murder metal.

Sinister Slaughter, while not the band’s first album, is undoubtedly the most well-known and celebrated. It was also my first exposure to the band when I picked this one up on cassette in the ‘90s.

First off, the subject matter is pretty straight forward—all the songs are about murderers, whether serial killers, spree killers, mass murderers, or even just people who committed a single murder. This is all mixed up with a pretty warped sense of humor, which can be viewed as distasteful for some. It is subject matter that, much like the band, I have long since had a vast interest in, so from that alone, the material gets my attention.

For the music, it is pretty fast for the most part, but there is also quite a bit of variety, with the use of acoustic guitars, clean singing in addition to the more aggressive vocals, and even little moody touches, such as the brief intro for the album’s opener, “Nightstalker”. The riffs are memorable as hell, as are many of the vocal lines. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself with one or more of the album’s songs stuck in you head afterward, perhaps even repeatedly singing it to yourself.

The actual sound of the band is something I want to mention as well. Some of it is down to the way the band writes, but there is the actual sound of everything as well. I imagine some of this is down to how the band likes to mix everything on the finished recordings, but some of it is also the tones, etc. that the band has. Pretty much everything is audible, even the bass, provided by Nefarious. The guitar tone is very clear, with a rather aggressive sounding attack to it. The bass guitar avoids being muddy and the drums are well-executed. Another element is the vocals, which are primarily Corporate Death and Nefarious switching back and forth, although Corporate Death is generally the primary vocalist. Nefarious has a deeper, growly voice, while Corporate Death usually goes for this crazy-sounding high-pitched screechy voice, which likely does put some people off, but I quite enjoy.

The songs themselves are all quite solid, although there are some that do stand out above the others. A few examples are the aforementioned “Nightstalker”, “What’s That Smell?”, “Zodiac”, and “Vampire of Düsseldorf”.

If you are looking for a band with a distinctive sound and personality with some catchy and aggressive songs, check out Macabre’s stuff in general, but Sinister Slaughter is probably the best place to start. If you lack a sense of humor, however, you would be better off to just steer clear of Macabre altogether.

Extreme metal is an oftentimes frightening display of the darkest realms of humanity and beyond. From mythical demons and monsters to more chilling tales of horror found within the real world. Obviously, what gives these lyrics their intended effect is the foreboding and aggressive music that acts as their vessel. The most important element of this music in my opinion is anger. Anger is what drew me to metal and what keeps me interested. Slayer’s lyrics without the pure aggression of Reign in Blood’s musical attack don’t hold up. The same can be said about almost any classic metal release. I can’t imagine that there are too many fans of the metal genre that don’t identify with the anger that permeates the music. What does this have to do with this particular release, one might ask? Well, what Macabre does on their 1993 effort Sinister Slaughter is probably the best example of pure, musical rage that I have ever heard.

I first want to dive into the vocals on this record due to their uniqueness and importance to the sound of Sinister Slaughter. While Macabre were using the screechy, high pitched style in conjunction with the more traditional death metal growls well before this release, I believe that this is when they truly combined the vocals and instrumentation perfectly. I feel it’s too cliché to say that the vocals sound like they’re coming from a deranged psychopath and I don’t even fully agree with that statement. I’ve always taken them as a manifestation of rage, yes but also fear which is why many people have such a fascination with the more morbid side of life anyway. It’s scary albeit interesting how a person could just decide to take human life as brutally and as many times as they please. Macabre captures this complex feeling every time Corporate Death opens his mouth on this record. He sounds like he is putting his entire being into some of these notes. Take “The Boston Strangler” as an example. The line "around her neck a strangler’s knot" is vomited forth with such intensity that his voice almost breaks. These moments crop up all through the album and if you don’t feel something course throughout your body when a singer is pouring literally everything into a performance like on this record, this may not be your genre. The vocal performance from the mysterious “Scary Gary” on White Hen Decapitator is also one of my favourite moments on the record. That first line is yet another moment of pure adrenaline. The low vocals on tracks like "Shotgun Peterson" and "Zodiac" are deep and menacing which highlights the frantic screeching perfectly. While they may not convey the fury that the higher vocals do, they certainly provide atmosphere and a beautiful contrast making the screeching even more impactful.

The instrumentation is extremely unique in its own right. It is frantic, heavy and at times silly to match the themes of the song. The songs thrash and grind behind Corporate Death’s inspired vocals creating what I believe to be the perfect extreme metal record. It combines thrash, death and grind so seamlessly into a concoction that can only be described as perfection. While some people may disagree with this review and like or dislike the record for many different reasons, these are simply my observations and feelings garnered after listening to this album hundreds of times. In closing, I feel confident saying that no matter what grindcore, noisecore or anything-core you can muster up, nothing I’ve experienced comes close to the perfectly articulated aggression of "Sinister Slaughter".

Macabre's Sinister Slaughter was one of my first death metal albums, which I now find surprising due to the band's underground status and my admitted past refusal to accept anything but the most well-known and highest-respected material when it came to music in general. I find the fact that Macabre are not better-known to be very unfortunate, since they are so innovative and technically proficient, as well as original and consistent.

This album is made up of 21 songs, with an average length of about two minutes each. Being one of the earlier inspirations to the more lyrically violent side of death metal and goregrind, Macabre sings exclusively about serial killers on this album, with each song being matched to a unique true-story psychopath. Each song is a destructively ear-piercing adventure into insanity, with the often use of two vocalists screaming in unison perfectly painting the gruesome pictures of the stories they're telling. The album also features a handful of oddball moments, such as the classical guitar solo in the intro of "What the Hell Did You Do?" and the hilariously used fake honky-tonk piano at the beginning of album highlight "Vampire of Dusseldorf."

I mentioned earlier that the band members were extremely technically proficient, and I wasn't just saying that to make the review longer. From the previously mentioned nylon guitar solo to the ridiculously fast shred at the beginning of "Edmund Kemper Had a Horrible Temper", guitar aficionado Corporate Death truly proves himself as a pioneer of the technical death metal style, while drummer Dennis The Menace pounds away at his double bass pedals with computer-like precision, even taking a neckbreaking solo in the intro for "White Hen Decapitator."

None of this appraisal is to say the album is perfect; in fact, the production is mediocre and could easily have been improved. While the demented vocals and freakishly fast guitars can be heard clearly, the bass is very hard to distinguish most of the time and the drum quality could be significantly improved; the hi-hats are often lacking in presence and the toms and kicks sound tinny. This doesn't, however, detract from the overall solid song quality at any point on the album.

I wish more people would give this album a listen. While I have no doubt that plenty of metalheads are familiar with Macabre's discography, they deserve to be in the spotlight along with Death and Cannibal Corpse as early innovators of the death metal style. Even bands like Nile have clearly taken cues from this menacing power trio. In some senses, this album is a forgotten classic, a true forerunner to all the best-loved things that were to be afterward.

This album quickly became my favorite of all time due to its sick and morbid content. Songs about serial killers and mass murderers, well written and executed, catchy and technical, is what this band makes, and they're fucking good in doing it.

Musically, you can hear influences from thrash metal, death metal, and grindcore.
The vocals fit the music very well, ranging from maniac shrieks, to high pitched screams, to harsh growling.

Take Zodiac for example. The track starts slow, and then progresses to Corporate Death growling the lines of one of the actual Zodiac letters, before roaming into the upbeat chorus that is reminiscent to songs from the 60's that will stay in your head and force you to sing along.

Like the previous album Gloom, most of the songs start with singing and then well thought-out instrumental parts. Best example for that is Vampire Of Düsseldorf, which in the end showcases the advanced skills of the members.

The production is excellent, but not too clean of course. The guitar sounds gritty and raw, and the bass is really audible and energetic. The drums are my favorite part of the band musically, because Dennis the Menace is one of the best drummers I've heard. The drumming has improved since Gloom, and focusing more on double bass then blastbeats.

If you are a fan of thrash metal, grindcore or death metal, you should pick it up. You won't have any regrets about it.

Wow, just wow.

Macabre is an amazing band all around. This album is, in my opinion, their best work. I'll start off by saying Corporate Death is one of the sickest, ugliest, and harshest vokillists in the metal underground. His vocals are high, completely comprehensible, and harsh as FUCK. I have never heard someone sing with such intensity since Kevin Sharp from Brutal Truth. His lyrics are also very intelligent, and very funny at the same time. The guitar work on this album is stunning. Brutal riffs, thrashy, speedy, and awesome. The solos are very clean sounding, and the mix on this album is so great you can hear the solo and everything else going on at the same time perfectly. Dennis The Menace does an excellent job on this cd. Very fast, lots of blasts and double bass that isn't overused, and intense.
Nefarious grunts his head off on this release and has some great bass-lines for this CD, it makes the whole thing as heavy as it is.

This album has it all for any fan of extreme metal: Inteligent but hilarious lyrics, harsh-as-hell high pitched screams, brutal low growls, brutal guitar-work, killer and fast drum work, and an original sounding bass.

Any fan of grind, death metal & serial killers must have this release, it's the definition of perfection!

Words cannot do this album justice. I had never heard Macabre before when I saw them opening for Cannibal Corpse in 2002. They are one of the most entertaining live bands I've ever seen.

The first track I heard from this record was "The Vampire of Dusseldorf". Upon hearing the intro I can remember thinking, "what the fuck is this shit?", almost in the same sense as when I had when I first listened to "Fast as a Shark". Vampire of Dusseldorf is hilarious, skullcrushing, technically astounding (2:19), catchy as all hell, and it never gets old.

The opening track, "Nightstalker", is just so fucking cool. I don't how many times I hit the back button on my CD player to hear Corporate Death scream, SWEAR TO SATAN! From there it just goes into this monstrously simple crushing riff. I find myself laughing and headbanging when the chorus comes up. The high pitched voice yelling "NIGHT STALK-ERRR" is just so fucking metal, not to mention the chorus riff is flat out brutalizing.

The Boston Strangler is my other favorite from this disc. Corporate Death's high pitched vocals are just awesome.

As someone previously mentioned, this disc never gets old.

From the opening track entitled "Nightstalker", when Corporate Death screeches "SWEAR TO SATAN", you know you're going to be in for a complete and utter metal assault. The great thing about this album, is it is one of the few that never gets old; I can listen to it over and over and still headbang until I'm blind. When it reaches track seven, and "Boston Strangler" starts beating you down, you'll see what I mean about this gem never losing it's grace, the song pounds and pounds, unrelenting until the chorus is etched into your brain.

Believe it or not, certain folk/nursery rhymes influences are evident here (good examples, are track five: "Zodiac", track eight: "Mary Bell"), foreshadowing their quaintly amusing "Macabre Minstrels" side-project. Bands that employ such novel and interesting musical scapes into something as sociopathic as grindcore (and do it well) are few and far between.

The acoustic ballad, "Mary Bell" (track eight) is a good addition to the album in my opinion, though the following track, which is basically the same song without vocals is pointless. They could have amalgamated the two into one song, though I'm sure they have their reasons for not doing so.

Another high-point on this album is "What's That Smell?", a grind attack about Jeffrey Dahmer.

The guitaring here is awesome, bringing to (my) mind Repulsion and DRI, among others. The vocals are among the top ten in the grindcore scene, most definitely. The drumming is equally excellent, and toned just perfectly for what this band succeeds at doing: making excellent grindcore, that never repeats itself or grows tiring. This trio is one of few bands who can do no wrong in my book; no one plays tighter murder metal than these men.

This album, Gloom/Grim Reality and Dahmer would never leave my CD changer if I had one.

High score!