L
ITERARY TYPES ARE PROBABLY FAMILIAR WITH THE DARKER SIDE OF NURSERY RHYMES AND FAIRY TALES. For the uninitiated, seemingly innocent children’s fare often served as a warning against everything from talking to strangers (Little Red Riding Hood) to the bubonic plague (“Ring Around the Rosie” – though admittedly this has been disputed). Some will also argue that they functioned as historical documents, such as “Three Blind Mice” supposedly referencing Queen “Bloody Mary” I’s burning of three noblemen at the stake.
Chicago death metal institution
Macabre has been following this folk- loric tradition for the past 25 years, writing nursery rhymes about serial killers and historic mass murderers as the foundation for its extreme musical vision – most recently on the appropri- ately titled Grim Scary Tales (out now on Willowtip Records). “Throughout history there have been
these little rhymes and ditties that kids would sing while playing or skipping rope, that were about real killers,” ex- plains Macabre frontman Corporate Death. “Our songs go back to the orig- inal intent of nursery rhymes. It’s a warning to people that it’s a crazy world and there are a lot of crazy peo- ple out there. Watch out.” Formed in 1985, the band’s first re-
lease (1987’s Grim Reality EP) featured songs about Henry Lee Lucas, “Son of Sam” David Berkowitz and infamous pedophile and cannibal Albert Fish. While the themes of gore and atrocity typical of death metal were also present, the trio – rounded out by Dennis the Menace (drums) and Nefarious
(bass, vocals) – decided to focus exclu- sively on true crime by their second full-length, Sinister Slaughter (1993). Macabre’s music took a turn for the
bizarre with the eventual injection of children’s rhymes, though, a move that gave the band a vibe that was sickly perverted and, well, downright silly. On Grim Scary Tales, the track “Bella the Butcher,” (about Norwegian-American serial killer Belle Gunness) includes the rhyme: “To keep her cleaver busy, Belle would run an ad, and men would come a-scurrying, with all the cash they had.” “Growing up, my mom would buy us
a lot of children’s albums, stuff that had a lot of rhymes and nice vocals,” ex- plains Death. “I got into Dr. Seuss a lot. It just somehow occurred to me one day that I could play super-heavy stuff to it. You can growl and scream your brains out, but it’s not going to have the same impact as when you include the rhymes.” Interestingly, Death – who
credits a junior high book re- port on The Story of Bonnie and Clyde and the true mur- der tome Bloodletters and Badmen by Jay Robert Nash as inspiration for his morbid fasci-
nation – considers his songwriting a continuation of the oral tradition of sto- rytelling. “I realized that what I was doing
was the same thing that was done before the printing press, when we didn’t have media and ways to spread information like we have today,” he says. “Back then, min- strels would travel around and, for a place to stay for the night and maybe some food, they would perform out- side people’s houses, and often their songs and poetry were about killers. ... I brought back an old art form without even knowing it.” While Macabre’s sound is certainly
unique, never has it been more ver- satile than on the new album, the band’s first in eight years. Still rooted in technical death metal, Grim Scary Tales features fourteen distinct an- thems of mass murder, from the Uriah Heep-ish ’70s rock of “Mary Ann” (about English serial killer Mary Ann Cotton) to the finger-pickin’ goodness of “The Bloody Benders” (about the murderous family from Kansas). Fans won’t have to wait nearly as long
for another helping of fresh meat ei- ther. Death wrote enough material for a sequel, which should be out next year. After that, the band plans to re- lease an album chronicling the life of Albert Fish, akin to their 2000 con- cept album Dahmer, written after Death attended the serial killer’s trial. Clearly, the members of Macabre
have immersed themselves deeper in the world of serial killers than most hardened gorehounds. So what keeps them coming back for more? “I don’t think anything is off limits
for us these days,” suggests Death. “Though for the most part I won’t do spree killers. Guys who went and shot people in one fit of rage like [at] Columbine just aren’t that interest- ing. Serial killers, on the other hand, can fool everyone. These guys need to be studied more to see what makes them tick.”
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