REVIEW: MACABRE – Grim Scary Tales

 

MACABRE – Grim Scary Tales

Hammerheart Records

MACABRE stand among the earliest bands to explore the extreme territories that would later crystallize into death metal and grindcore. Active since 1984, they’ve long insisted on calling their music murder metal—and honestly, it’s the most accurate term available. Trying to categorize them strictly by musical influences would require a full-length book rather than a simple review.

The “murder metal” tag isn’t just about the sharp, abrasive, and often extreme elements in their sound. The defining factor is thematic: for decades, MACABRE have written exclusively about serial killers, their crimes, and the grim histories surrounding them. Every album is essentially a macabre anthology set to music.

Sonically, attempting to outline the main ingredients of this U.S. trio’s style means casting a very wide net. Thrash, death metal, and grind are obvious foundations, but they coexist with math‑rock twists, punk energy, folk‑like melodies, nursery‑rhyme motifs, deranged children’s‑song cadences, jazz‑fusion detours, and even black‑metal edges. These elements form the frenetic, eccentric amalgam that defines MACABRE’s identity.

Lyrically, Grim Scary Tales continues the band’s tradition of recounting all‑too‑real stories of historical killers. The figures portrayed here include Locusta, Nero, Gilles de Rais, Vlad Tepes, Gilles Garnier, Elizabeth Bathory (via a cover of VENOM’s “Countess Bathory”), Burke and Hare, Mary Ann Cotton, the Bender Family, Lizzy Borden, Joseph Vacher, Belle Gunness, Béla Kiss, and Karl Großmann.

All of this is executed with razor‑sharp precision, tight musicianship, and a level of skill that often goes underappreciated. Corporate Death’s vocal performance remains a spectacle in itself—shifting from guttural growls to clean lines to unhinged, psycho‑screeching outbursts that fit the subject matter disturbingly well.

For long‑time fans, this album is an easy investment. For newcomers, only those who are genuinely open‑minded and drawn to progressive, unconventional, and evolutionary forms of extreme music should step into Grim Scary Tales. You need to be a bit of a psycho yourself to appreciate this sophisticated madness. I suppose I am—because I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Christine  Parastatidou