When one thinks of death metal in the late 1980s, there are a few hotspots that come to mind. Florida, and Sweden are among the most popular, but several other locations had excellent scenes as well - New York, Poland, Finland, the Netherlands, France, and the list can go on. The midwest is one of the more overlooked areas in the United States when it comes to death metal. Many of these bands never really made it past demo stage, and even the most successful and influential band from the area (Chicago's Master) took more than half a decade to release a full length. Dr. Shrinker were one of the many bands from this region who maintained a sizeable cult following throughout the years, but remained largely ignored by the growing death metal scene.Forming in 1987, the band released three official demos in their short career. The first demo, "Recognition" was a very basic, primitive, sloppy and crude recording. Good in its own right, it did not really have the personality or charm to distinguish it from more competant bands who played in a similar vein. Their final demo, "The Eponym" shows a very cleanly produced band going for a more technical death metal sound, not too far off from what Death would be doing on "Human", and unfortunately he clean production and overcomposed songs killed most of the raw energy the band had.
"Wedding the Grotesque", however, is their Goldilocks album. Not too basic, not too produced, but just right in the middle, acting as the best of both worlds. Rather long for a demo, 12 tracks in 47 minutes, "Wedding the Grotesque" is easily the band's masterpiece, and one of the best death metal recordings to come out of the 1980s. Starting off with a sample from Hellraiser 2, the band immediately kicks into high gear with their brand of death metal, which rarely lets up for the remainder of the demo. The guitar tone on here is extremely filthy and savage and lends a great deal of atmosphere to these songs, and the vocals are a unique high pitched shriek that does not sound like any other band I have heard. Combined with the unique delivery, the vocals are often coupled with over the top reverb, echo and delay effects in key points which accentuate the eccentric nature of the music. Its unfortunate that the band cleaned up their sound and went with a more 'professional' approach on their next demo, as this style of production really highlights a certain insanity that many bands were unable to capture.
The songs themselves retain a simplistic approach to their composition, and the riffs are very well placed and keep the listener engaged without getting overly repetitive. Drumming also lends to this, with some excellently timed fills and hits that greatly add to the music, something many drummers tend to avoid in favor of tedious double bass runs.
Dr. Shrinker is certainly competant at playing fast death metal, but really shines when they favor a slower demo, creating a very morbid and brooding sound. The band does display a certain sense of humor, in both the lyrics and their selection of samples (the best being one of Charlie Manson spouting off gibberish), but it does not get in the way of the overall dark feel of the music.Necroharmonic has reissued the band's three demos on a CD called "Grotesque Wedlock", which includes lots of awesome flyers that contain some great artwork in them. The only material missing from this discgraphy CD is a rehearsal song called "Our Necropsy" that appears on a split 7" with Nunslaughter - an excellent slower track which would have fit right in on "Wedding the Grotesque". While this demo is slightly off-kilter death metal that might not sound much alike other primitive and simplistic death metal bands like Master or Massacre, its certainly an underground classic that deserves greater praise and recognition then it has received over the years.
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