The Dahmers - Down In The Basement
- Written by Kenneth McMurtrie
Here's one for your Hallowe'en party. Eighteen tracks of Scandinavian garage rock with a bit of a horror twist.
Down In The Basement turns out to be the band's third album so they may not be new to everyone reading this. By all accounts though they've significantly honed their craft over the period 2016-2018 when these songs were written and recorded.
Which is handy given the recent history of similar bands from their part of the planet - Mando Diao having failed to live up to early promise and The Hives basically treading water after the first couple of albums.
The songs either then chug along pleasantly ('Street Of The Dead') or race to a close ('Murder Ride', 'Hit 'N' Run') as the Swedish quartet plumb the depths of classic rock, '60s punk and Hammer Horror. The Star Spangles come to mind as a sorely missed reference point.
X-rated horrors from the past are referenced ('I Spit On Your Grave') as are murderous characters ('The Ripper'). The latter does though feature the rather overused sample about having a good time, getting loaded & riding motorcycles as popularised by Primal Scream (and Mudhoney before them) a few decades back. It doesn't really seem to have any bearing on the content of the song but hey ho.
It's a while since a band new to me has given me the feeling that seeing them live would be exciting, rather than just a chance to possibly be entertained in person by a well rendered version of their album but with Down In The Basement The Dahmers have succeeded in getting me to keep an eye out for them on a bill somewhere, albeit that would still really need to be in Edinburgh at a weekend but we'll see what the coming months hold.
Down In The Basement is available from Lövely Records here.