It may have taken Cadaver 16 years to return with their fifth album, but the same line-up of Neddo (vocals, guitar, bass) and Dirk Verbeuren (drums) have produced the sixth after only three. I was quite a fan of ‘Edder & Bile’ and was intrigued to hear what the latest one would be like, and I was not disappointed. One of the joys of Cadaver is that while they are renowned for being a death metal band, formed some 35 years ago by Neddo and others, they are always looking to do something quite different. This time around they commence with “Sycophants Swing” which is what a jazz band would sound like if they were trapped in an asylum and forced to play the same tune for 20 or 30 years, and one can only wonder what will come next.
That next is “Postapocalyptic Grinding” where Dirk shows he can blast as well as anyone and they straddle the boundaries of death and grind, yet when they come to tracks such as “Dissolving Chaos” the result is something that is far slower and almost power metal in its approach but with some black metal overtones. This is an extreme metal album which refuses to sit solidly within just one genre and instead keeps showing what they are capable of, with their cover of “Deadly Metal” being pure thrash from beginning to end. Norwegian metal legend Ronni Le Tekrø, guitarist with old school heroes TNT, can be heard shredding like a madman all over the album. He originally came in just to play a blistering solo on that track but had so much fun he stayed! It is also interesting to note that double-bass maestro Eilert Solstad, who performed on Cadaver’s second album, 1992’s ‘….In Pains’, returns on the murderous ‘Scum Of The Earth’, adding scabrous textures and subterranean tones.
Neddo recently fought cancer and came out the other side, and has used that experience to motivate himself even more, the result being an exciting album from a band who are pointedly refusing to rest on their laurels but instead are out to show there is plenty of life in them yet.
Rating: 8/10
Links:
https://www.facebook.com/cadavertheband/
https://www.nuclearblast.com/
