Dahmer

Dahmer is obviously one of the main albums that define the band Macabre; their unique, quite experimental style of death/thrash metal was applied along with time; distorted jazz chords, technical appergios, and shredding are exposed in this album; mainly these sections with chords in B Standard were influenced by NOFX or other 80's/90's skate/ska punk bands.

Dahmer is a grotesque and obnoxiously gut-wrenching documentary of Jeffrey Dahmer in the form of music; every detail and line on this album is unfortunately true.

The album starts with the drama-based song "Dog Guts", The song is dramatic and brutal, mainly on the chorus (Roadkill, roadkill/ Jeffrey used to bring home; Roadkill, roadkill; Young Jeffrey loved to play with; Roadkill, roadkill […]), when all the instruments are in rhythm.

The guitars are based mostly on versatile and genuine technical playing; it includes jazz chords, which are present on "Dog Guts" and the outro for "Bath House", melodic overdubs in tracks like "Ambassador Hotel," and after the harmonic overdub, Corporate Death starts to play an overdrived solo, perfectly fitting with the tenebrous atmosphere of the track.

Speaking about atmosphere, the album is mixed between silliness on composition, a notable example can be their parody of the lullaby Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Jeffrey and the Chocolate Factory), copying the rhythm and melody, tracks like "In The Army Now", "Grandmother's House", "Jeffrey and the Chocolate Factory" and "Coming to Chicago" shows their morbid humor of the band with serious themes, contributing with their goofy way of music composition, sounding perfect as well, but at the same time they're silly musically, they're very dramatic, mostly on intros, like "Dog Guts" and the whole of "Temple of Bones".

The bass, though not audible in some sections of the album (e.g., The outro for "Apartment 213), is brutal and heavy, responsible for some sections of the drum's toms being a bit earraped. Well, the guitar is bass/treble-boosted, so I could say it was an issue with poor mixing, albeit that the bass is a very versatile instrument in this album; there are sections where the bass has a different riff from the guitar.

The drums are the main enhancement of the album; the funky jazz snare can prove that, and Dennis's abuse of semiquaver/thirty-second note drum kicks in the groovy sections and sixty-fourth note snare fills contain the authentic way of drum-playing of Dennis.

The mixing is mild and solid, though some tracks have inaudible bass in some parts, and sometimes the drums are earraped, but it's not an awful problem for such a raw full-length from a death/grind/thrash metal band. The guitars are bass/midle-boosted and with a reduced mid, yet with a semi-cranked distortion.

The production is brutal, the well-executed engineering is presentable, and it perfectly fits into 2000's "second wave of grindcore," in which grindcore bands with a more solid and modern sound started to appear (Nasum, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, etc.).

Overall, this is a mixture of experimentation and "incubation" of jazz's elements inside grind/death metal; Macabre will always be known as the kings of murder metal.