Richard HolmesCadaver – Edder & Bile (Nuclear Blast)
If you’re going to resurrect and renew your long dormant death metal outfit, you might as well as do it with one of the finest drummers in the business.
And they don’t come much better than current Megadeth and former Soilwork sticksman Dirk Verbeuren.
Cadaver founder Anders Odden met Verbeuren on the 2014 70000 Tons Of Metal cruise, when the Belgian stood in for Frost behind Satyricon’s kit.
Verbeuren professed his love for Cadaver’s early 90s material, the pair hit it off… and here we are.
The partnership gave us last year’s D.G.A.F. EP – Cadaver’s first release since 2004’s Necrosis – and has now spawned Edder & Bile, a ferocious slab of serrated death metal that goes straight for the jugular.
The last 16 years – which included a lengthy stint with Celtic Frost – certainly haven’t mellowed Odden.
On Edder & Bile the Norwegian multi-instrumentalist blends the unhinged assault of Cadaver’s 1990 debut, Hallucinating Anxiety, with merciless, precision riffing and icy melodic textures.
Throw Verbeuren’s eviscerating hyperblasts into the mix and you have a recipe for annihilation.
The blackened Deathmachine is a prime example of Cadaver’s scorched earth policy, with Verbeuren taking God knows what out on his snare drum, while its follow-up, the aptly named Reborn, is a touch more subtle in the way it blisters your ear canal.
Like all premium death metal, there’s an almost inhuman quality to much of Edder & Bile, from savage opener Morgue Ritual to the album’s Celtic Frost-influenced conclusion, Let Me Burn.
Surprisingly, guest stars Possessed’s Jeff Becerra and Massacre’s Kam Lee provide vocals on two of the record’s weaker songs – Circle Of Morbidity and Feed The Pigs respectively – with neither track matching the infernal energy and focus of, say The Pestilence or Final Fight.
That aside, Edder & Bile is one hell of a return for this cult act.
It builds on Cadaver’s legacy as Scandinavian DM pioneers.
But it also represents a new way forward for Odden.
Let’s just hope it’s not another 16 years before the band return, as this deadly duo are a formidable combination.
