Album Review: Cadaver - Hallucinating Anxiety
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
When stricken with indecision about which albums to review it often pays to call upon the wisdom of the editor and ask for a random pick. And it’s funny how these things turn out sometimes – Cadaver popped, necrotic and sickly, into the world on a splash of lipoid claret in the late 80's, screeching along with the birth agonies of death metal as a whole. They're a name I’ve seen bodied around a fair bit, holding a similar sort of cult renown to bands like Morta Skuld or Rottrevore that never obtained the status of your Morbid Angels, or Deaths, or Entombeds, but that nonetheless bestowed killer shit upon us. Shamefully though, this is the first time I’ve ever sat with any of their work. I know, I know, unforgivable, but there is so much death metal in a world that only gives me 24 hours in a day to work with. However, at least here, the wisdom of the editor allows me a shot at making restitution. “Hallucinating Anxiety”, the debut from these Norwegian reprobates, is seeing a rerelease – and I am tasked with the reviewing of it. So without further ado, let’s find out how grave a transgression my failure to consume this little pile of putridity years ago was.
There’s a level of ambivalence that I’m stoically enduring right now. I will die one day, and I will do so not having heard every metal album worthy of a fair shake. On the other hand, metal is deep beyond mortal reckoning, and the lightless depths only extend with time. There is boundless opportunity for the discovery of fresh wonders new and old – case in point, this Cadaver album. Where best to start... let’s go for something I’m helplessly in love with: the drum sound. I’d be nowhere in between the 1st to the 9 millionth person to bemoan a lot of modern day metal production, so let’s just say that I have an unrepentant favour for organic, raw production motifs and approaches. And this drum sound...fuck if I don’t just adore it. Fulsome, aggressive, confrontational, the cymbals smash their way through the grille of the speakers in cascades of shattered glass while a pine-coffin snare begs for succour beneath it. Toms thud with a barrel chested boom and each bassy thump at the kick drum blasts out like a shock wave. What sprang to mind almost immediately was actually early grindcore albums – stuff like “Horrified” or “Scum” that may not be as precise or dialled in as music gets nowadays but that instead held this infinitely appealing DIY sensibility of a bunch of kids playing as fast and hard and loud as they possibly could.
The guitars have this shark-bite serration to them, with more buzzing than the stock cupboard at Ann Summers. It’s this gristle-bound cartilaginous scrape of a sound that feels like being raked over gravel. It’s nasty, and the rabid hyena bark vocals, slathered and dripping in reverb, only add to this. They sound to a strong extent like a distant relation of the sandpaper throated caterwauling of the Latin American thrash scene, in which speed, venom, and crazed thrashing was the order of business. The album sounds phenomenal, like the realised platonic ideal of how an old school death metal album would sound. And in the album’s best showings, like the comprehensively revolting slowdown at 2.23 of “Innominate” or the disorienting sequential tempo shifts at the opening of “Twisted Collapse” the album attains this level of OSDM sublimity that makes me kick myself for not having heard it much, much sooner. It’s hardly taut in terms of its playing – especially at faster moments the songs really are breakneck cases of the whole band zipping to mach five in a blink and you’d better pray to sweet Jesus that you were holding onto to something sturdy when they did. Even on thrashier parts it’s noticeable that the guitars and drums will sometimes outpace each other, but never so badly that the overall integrity of the track gets compromised. If anything the whole head-down-hold-on-to-your-ass firebombing angle it goes for adds this undeniable charm to it that hooked me instantly.
The general standard of the songs is pretty strong overall, though some do suffer for memorability a bit. I flick over a tracklist, choose at random, and while what greets me pleases me i struggle to recall it later on. “Erosive Fester” for example has the agreeable coffin stench of Obituary but with the BPM dialled up a notch or two. The crusty verse tremolo sloughing it’s skin off to reveal the gaunt revenant of mid paced Celtic Frost riffs below will never not be satisfying, but once it’s done it’s as though it wandered out of my mind for cigarettes and crisps but never came back. Likewise, “Petrified Faces” has neat interplay between the gangrenous sway of it’s introduction, a few sections that roll like reeking slabs of gut fat, and some “fuck it, strap rockets to it’s arse” bursts of blasting Insanity, but once it’s over, even as I listen to it closely, repeatedly, very deliberately, it slips away like smoke. This doesn’t apply to every song obviously – “Hypertrophan” is ambidextrous when it comes to it’s knife hand, doing an undead ballerina pirouette between time signatures and tempos to absolutely carpet the room with corpses. “Bodily Trauma” too scores points with smooth dissection work, each riff slotting as if greased into the next to accentuate the always catchy roar of “BODILY TRAUMA”.
About the only thing that did bother me was “Tuba Libre”, which is a heinous, squealing interlude track in which the band presumably unleash unnameable varieties of sexual deviancy upon a brass instrument for reasons incomprehensible to the civilised mind. It surpasses worthless, I have no idea what possessed them to include it, but aside from it Cadaver mostly impress – even if the lasting impression more concerns the way the album sounds as opposed to what the album does with that sound. But, there we are – I’ve listened to, and appreciated, Cadaver’s fledging effort. It would be nice to relinquish the whip and cease these endless sessions of self-flagellation, but like any true penitent I understand that the next sin is likely enough mere footfalls away. The cat-o-nine-tails shall see no rest this day, then, for God alone knows how many other albums I should have listened to years ago crouch just around the corner.
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