It’s a testament to the dedication (and depravity) of all those involved that a band like Macabre can live through a quarter century of fads, fashions and flat-out shitty bands, yet still manage to continually outdo themselves at their own game. Much like those who brought us all those wonderfully campy and gory slasher flicks in the 80’s, Macabre have built their career on the backs of serial killers, knife wielding maniacs and blood-thirsty bastards from all walks of life. They don’t call it ‘murder metal’ for nothing, after all.

The band’s newest opus, and first proper full-length since 2003’s Murder Metal, is as off-the-wall as anything they’ve produced to date. Every bit the raucous, gore-grind slab of still-quivering meat fans have come to expect from the band, Grim Scary Tales is another one in the win column for this now legendary trio. Thankfully, we live in a society that provides no shortage of lyrical fodder for a band that specialized in penning odes to history’s most beloved killers and this particular tome is chock-full of favorites. Like a kick-ass pack of serial killer trading cards (featuring arsenic-laced bubblegum!), Grim Scary Tales digs deep into the annals of true crime history for inspiration. Illustrious characters like Lizzy Borden, Vlad Tepes and Elizabeth Bathory, to name a few, are brought to life like never before on this album.

Guitarist/vocalist Corporate Death brings a certain charm to the table when re-telling these tales. Who else could sing about French aristocrat Gilles de Rais cutting up children and masturbating on their organs with a deviously sing-song voice and grin-inspiring eloquence as Mr. Death does during the chorus of “The Black Knight?” Another Frenchman, Gilles Garnier (convicted werewolf and cannibal from the 16th Century) is hilariously chronicled in the grindcore meets nursery rhyme “The Big Bad Wolf.” Jumping forward a couple hundred years and several thousand miles, Macabre visits my native Kansas for the shit-kickin’ ho-down “The Bloody Benders.” The most metal a country tune has ever been, this one threatens to turn the pit into a square dance when added to the band’s live set. A culture shock from the aforementioned, Macabre blissfully butcher all that is opera with the folksy ballad “Nero’s Inferno.” Bloody historians these guys are.

Genre-bending, dementia and gratuitous (and oddly appropriate) cheese aside, Grim Scary Tales is one exceptionally badass offering of skull-grinding metal. Riff-o-manias like “The Sweet Tender Meat Vendor” and “Burke and Hare” will leave no horns unraised, while “Mary Ann” comes across as haunting as it is irresistible.

It’s this writer’s opinion that Macabre are one of the genre’s most criminally underrated acts going today. For 25 years, these three morbid Chicagoans have been spinning historically accurate, cleverly written and musically exceptional yarns of killers, corpses and human atrocities, yet have gone unnoticed by all but the most loyal metalhead. Here’s hoping that their silver anniversary sees them break that glass ceiling and achieve the iconic status they so richly deserve. If nothing else, let’s pray that the kids at least pick this one up in favor of whatever screamo drivel the skinny-jeans contingency hurls at us this week. Be real, be metal, be Macabre!

-KK

(four outta five horns)