The Black Dahlia Murder at the Highline Ballroom

Trevor Strnad

The Black Dahlia Murder formed as a death metal band in 2001 in Waterford, Michigan. Absorbed with horror and gore, vocalist Trevor Strnad adapted the band's name from the 1947 unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short, often referred to as Black Dahlia, who was bisected at the waist and left on display in a California parking lot in 1947. The Black Dahlia Murder currently consists of Strnad, guitarists Brian Eschbach and Brandon Ellis, drummer Alan Cassidy, and bassist Max Lavelle. The band's eighth and most recent album, Nightbringers, was released on October 6, 2017.

Sixteen years after first starting, the Black Dahlia Murder demonstrated tonight at the Highline Ballroom that the macabre may have no limits. A glance at the set list showed that the band was very much obsessed with grizzly tales of weird design. For those who followed the lyrics, they were uncompromisingly relentless in gruesome detail. A new song, "Matriarch," for instance, told of a woman who was unsuccessful in having a child, so she stalked a pregnant woman and cut the baby out of her. The band's hard and heavy music was equally merciless,  overflowing with growled vocals, barely discernible lyrics, speedy guitar riffs and thrashing, crashing rhythms. No doubt, this was an extreme metal concert, and not meant for the faint of heart.

Visit the Black Dahlia Murder at www.tbdmofficial.com.

Setlist:

1. Widowmaker
2. Statutory Ape
3. Contagion
4. I Worship Only What You Bleed
5. Nightbringers
6. Miasma
7. In Hell Is Where She Waits for Me
8. Abysmal
9. A Shrine to Madness
10. Matriarch
11. Malenchantments of the Necrosphere
12. Vlad, Son of the Dragon
13. Everything Went Black
14. Kings of the Nightworld
15. What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse
16. On Stirring Seas of Salted Blood
17. Unhallowed
18. Funeral Thirst
19. Deathmask Divine
20. I Will Return