The Age Of The Offended

“When things change, I always embrace it. Change is what makes life interesting. If it’s all the same, nothing happens. But when everything turns upside down, you have to figure out how do everything a different way. Making music in these times is kind of liberating, you know? I know how soon things could end, so now I really don’t give a fuck.” (A. Odden, 2023)

Over 30 years into their nefarious saga, Cadaver remain one of the most unique and potent forces in contemporary heaviness. Formed in Norway in 1988 and led by founding vocalist/guitarist Anders Odden, they pioneered a strange and terrifying strain of death metal that proudly ignored the rulebook. Showcased on seminal debut Hallucinating Anxiety and its sophisticated follow-up, …In Pains (1992), their commitment to a subversive ethos set them apart from the vast majority of like-minded bands.

In 2023, Cadaver are back once again to raise a scabby middle digit to the very notion of metal conformity. After a turbulent few years, during which he fought and won a battle with cancer, Odden and his drumming comrade Dirk Verbeuren have concocted a deranged and venomous follow-up to 2020’s widely acclaimed Edder & Bile. Both true to the band’s primitive roots and an audacious, ground-breaking, psychedelic horror-show, The Age Of The Offended is an angry, fucked up album for angry, fucked up times, defiantly created against the odds.

Despite all the logistical challenges thrown up by a global pandemic, the strength and focus of Odden’s musical vision was never going to be thwarted. Recorded in Norway, Finland and LA, The Age Of The Offended represents yet another triumph over adversity for these enduring diehards. 

Cadaver’s catalogue is a strange and varied thing. From the primal death metal experiments of the early years, to the prescient tech-terrorism of 2001’s Discipline (released under the name Cadaver Inc) and the spiteful back-to-basics onslaught of 2004’s Necrosis, Odden has never walked a predictable path, but even by his own exacting, esoteric stands, The Age Of The Offended is a real revelation. Rooted in old school death metal but deliciously warped, with countless lysergic embellishments and moments of disorientating madness, songs like explosive opener Postapocalyptic Grinding and the pummelling bad trip of Death Revealed add yet more depth and colour to the Cadaver landscape.

Trigger warning: The Age Of The Offended is not for the overly sensitive. As a veteran of the Norwegian scene, Anders Odden remembers a time before smartphones and social media. Audibly disgusted by the state of things today, the new Cadaver album offers a reminder that the metal underground was created by people that rejected orthodoxy and refused to compromise. Today, the world is more concerned with not pissing people off, which runs distinctly against Cadaver’s core philosophy.

Aside from the inestimable skills of drummer Dirk Verbeuren, Odden is joined on The Age Of The Offended by some extremely notable figures. Firstly, Norwegian metal legend Ronni Le Tekrø, guitarist with old school heroes TNT, can be heard shredding like a madman all over the album. Originally brought in to play a solo on Cadaver’s twisted reworking of TNT classic Deadly Metal (also, incidentally, the name of Odden’s first band), Ronni subsequently enjoyed the experience so much that he offered to perform on the whole record. Meanwhile, double-bass maestro Eilert Solstad, who performed on ….In Pains in 1992, returns to the Cadaver fold on the murderous Scum Of The Earth, adding scabrous textures and subterranean tones to Odden’s cudgelling storm of riffs.

Finally, The Age Of The Offended offers more proof that Cadaver are a wholly singular force. With purposeful echoes of the strange, woozy intro he recorded for Hallucinating Anxiety, 33 years ago, trombone player Svein Johannessen has once again joined forces with Odden to create the new album’s unsettling starting point, The Sycophanto Swing…

Following up the grotesque rebirth of Edder & Bile was never going to be easy, but The Age Of The Offended confirms that Cadaver are on a roll and growing in strength and confidence. A wild and wicked barrage of hallucinatory brutality, it strikes a blow for originality, curiosity and defiance, in a world transfixed by the utterly mundane. Right now, as ever, nothing and no one else sounds remotely like them.

“When we grew up, we didn’t just listen to one kind of music, it was whatever was extreme,” Odden concludes. “Hardcore, death metal, black metal, grindcore, it didn’t matter. I think all these people who try to fit into a genre, they don’t understand that we never wanted to be part of any genre. That was our driving force - to do our own fucked up version of whatever suited our abilities, and if that was named black metal, death metal or grindcore, who the fuck cares?”

1.Sycophant’s Swing (Intro)
2.Postapocalyptic Grinding
3.Scum Of The Earth
4.The Age Of The Offended
5.Death Revealed
6.The Shrink
7.Crawl Of The Cadavar
8.The Drowning Man
9.The Sicker, The Better
10.Disolving Chaos
11.Deadly Metal
12.The Craving
13.Freezing Isolation