Album Review: Macabre - Carnival of Killers
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Releasing their first full album in nine-years, Chicago three-piece, Macabre, have lost none of their jet-black humour and none of the crazily inventive derangement that is so beloved and so bemusing in equal measure. Back in the day, first hearing Murder Metal, it took me such a long time to get my head around what was going on, with all of the shifts in tone and style, aggressive death and thrash sitting alongside nursery rhymes and that prevailing sense of dread lurking within every track.
Then, one day, the penny dropped and I realised this was how it was supposed to sound; that Macabre’s fascination with the subject of Serial Killers means their music is supposed to represent the internal thought process of a deranged or disturbed mind, jumping between periods of calm to frenzy and back again.
Their set in the Sophie Lancaster Stage at Bloodstock 2017 reminded us that the band needed to get back into the studio as soon as possible and, though three years have passed since that day, we can finally welcome the release of Carnival of Killers.
Those nine years have not blunted Macabre’s cutting edge and while some of the riff slice like a fresh scalpel, carefully removing flesh from bone, others bludgeon and crush. With such a title it is a given that a carnival tune would act as the intro track, all light-hearted and joyous, but with the prospect of bumping into Pennywise the Dancing Clown just around the corner.
The vicious assaults of Your Window is Open, Now It’s Time to Pay and lead track The Lake of Fire are all classic Macabre; thick, hook-laden guitar riffs played above heavy drums, screeching vocals sound tortured, representative of either the killer or the victim, or both.
As you would expect, there is no small amount of experimentation in the use of simple, catchy Nursery Rhymes and the lounge-singer vocals of Joe Ball Was His Name soon turns into the kind of tale recanted to a frightened child by an evil and malicious baby-sitter. And for all its stream of consciousness vocal frenzy and unsettling musical dissonance, you cannot help but be captivated by the childish outro to Stinky.
Musically, the band combine elements of death, thrash, punk and grindcore, blended in with the smattering of nursery rhymes and even manage to deliver some danceable, bouncing sections in Tea Cakes and Richard Speck Grew Big Breasts. For those who like their Serial Killer Metal a bit of a Barn Dance then the Hoe-Down of Warte, Warte could be right up your street.
Even after all these years, Macabre’s line up remains as it was in 1984. Corporate Death and Nefarious handle the strings and vocals while Dennis the Menace punishes the drums throughout. As you would expect the band are tight and feel psychically in-tune with one another, never once losing their momentum throughout the musical chaos they have created.
A truly welcome return for one of extreme music’s most consistently inventive and humorous bands and a reminder that, lurking behind every smile, could live the cold-heart of a deranged killer. Maybe meeting Pennywise might not have been so bad after all.
