Author: Jillian Drachman
Norway’s legendary extreme metal pioneers Cadaver, founded in 1988, have undertaken the noble task of presenting a sonically updated version of their debut album, Hallucinating Anxiety, 35 years later. Originally released by Necrosis Records, which was operated by Carcass’ Jeff Walker and Bill Steer, Hallucinating Anxiety is nothing short of a canonical work. In celebration of Listenable Records’ reissue, we discussed the effort with the massively influential Cadaver co-founder, driving force, and sole constant member, Mr. Anders Odden, himself. Although this revered vocalist and multi-instrumentalist has taken part in various other projects through the years, Cadaver will always be the achievement for which he is most known.
Odden provided guitars and lyrics for Hallucinating Anxiety, and he reflects, “It has historic value because it’s the first album I ever did when I was 17. I revisited the oldest songs when I reformed Cadaver in 2019 to find what I wanted to play live in our set, and we’ve been playing four or five songs from this album ever since. So, it’s part of our legacy. I’m really happy that we can share this album with a modern audience because it’s very-very different from music nowadays, to put it mildly. It was recorded on a 4-track tape machine, and it’s mixed in mono, but it has a great energy and attitude to it.”
Of the reissue, Odden states, “The songs and everything else are as original as they can be. It’s basically the same album with a little bit of a different order of the songs because there were two recordings, one in ’89 and one in ’90. So, now, on the LP, you can clearly hear that it’s two different recordings.” Producer and engineer Ketil Johansen had actually digitized the tapes many-many years ago. “He kept the tapes safe for years, and he’s still a very good friend. He’s actually coming along for the shows we’re doing now as a stage tech. He’s 73 years old. He’s still going strong and still loves metal. Ketil is one of the originals; he started to play in the bands in the ’60s.”
Cadaver enlisted musician and incredibly accomplished engineer Patrick Engel for mastering. Odden praises his skill and comments, “He has the best equipment to make everything sound as good as it can. He’s an old fan, so he really wanted to do this. He got some songs from me a while ago, actually. Then, I thought, ‘Why not just give him the whole thing because he obviously knows what he’s doing?!’ He really wants to do his best to make sure the sound is as good as it can be.”
Odden, who also has production credits for the reissue, carried out a bit of additional recording in May 2025. He clarifies, “I created a new intro and outro that kind of bind the material to the modern world a little bit more.” This was done at Odden’s studio, Tomb Studio. We inquired about his space, “I always had some sort of rehearsal place, and I always had recording equipment throughout my life as a musician, but it’s been improving. My recording room is basically an old barn where cows used to live back in the ’70s when that was my granddad’s way of life. I think they got rid of the cows in ’75 or something. So, the room was just sitting there empty for a while. My father used it for storage, and then, in about 2008/9, I started to use it more and more as a rehearsal space and studio. So, it’s basically at the farm where my parents actually still live; they are in the main house. It’s a family place, and that’s really nice.”
For Hallucinating Anxiety’s original opening, which now serves as the 10th composition, Cadaver made the brilliant decision to invite Svein Johannessen to contribute trombone. “He recorded that crazy trombone collage on a 4-track tape machine. He’s a very skilled musician. He has many different trombones. We tried to figure out some sort of intro piece that would be different at the time, and using trombone was something that we wanted to do also because, in the early ’90s, bands like Celtic Frost were using different kinds of instruments on their albums. But we wanted to do it with our own take. It’s always good to use people’s skills from other genres because they come with different approaches.” Odden informs us that, in decades past, Johannessen had a band with Eilert Solstad, who has appeared on bass and double bass with Cadaver. Odden wisely asked Johannessen to return for the magnificent and thrilling The Age of the Offended (2023), likewise starring Solstad, to create something reminiscent of a sample from the 1920s.
For the 2025 edition of Hallucinating Anxiety, Odden opted for a new cover by Daniele Valeriani, who has collaborated with the likes of Mayhem. Odden explains, “It was all about doing something that was closer to what we really wanted back in the day, because the cover, which is legendary in itself, was done without us knowing about it until we got the printed LP in the mailbox. I was kind of surprised that they used something that just looked like entrails when all the lyrics and everything about the album were more about the human condition, misanthropy, mental illness, and whatever. The themes were not really gory, so I think we were categorized as a gory band without even having any really gory lyrics. The style of the new artwork is kind of a tribute to the Reign in Blood album by Slayer but with a very different flavor. It has the head of a sheep on a platter, which kind of fits the Cadaver concept more. We actually had some band photos taken back in the day with some sheep that were just walking around in the grass.”
Cadaver will also be reissuing their third album, Necrosis (2004), and, in April 2025, unleashed the must-have Hymns of Misanthropy, which contains recordings from 1992. Odden remarks, “All of this is related because I just wanted the whole story of the band to be more tied together, including for new fans. Surprisingly, a lot of die-hard younger people are coming to the shows now.” This gives Odden hope, as it reminds him of the zealous spirit he had at their age and still retains. He notes that association with the genre bore much more weight when he was starting out, “You had to be metal. Anything we did, we had to carve out from scratch. We had to basically create our own studs. There was no kit to go and buy online to look like you’re into metal.”
Odden further reminisces upon the beginning of his extreme metal journey, “I kind of discovered the music through listening to the radio when Mayhem was on the local station in Oslo. I listened in when I was 13. They revealed that they were from Langhus, so I figured out how to get hold of them through the phone book. Immediately after I found Mayhem, I started my own extreme metal band with friends from school that were into kind of the same thing but not as extreme as me, more like Mercyful Fate, Slayer, and Metallica. I wanted to go darker and more sinister.”
During the COVID pandemic, Odden formed 1405 Mayhem (1405 representing Mayhem’s old zip code) with Mayhem founders Necrobutcher and Manheim, plus the man who is regarded as their first vocalist, Billy Messiah. “Everything stopped, so I met with Necrobutcher and Manheim once a week and rehearsed all the old stuff from Mayhem’s repertoire from ’84 till ’87. We have been talking about doing some shows after Mayhem finishes celebrating their 40th anniversary. Other than that, I have some private recordings, or rehearsals, and stuff, but we haven’t talked about releasing anything yet. I guess down the line, we will probably do some live recording or something.” The chimerical quartet has, in fact, already briefly appeared onstage.
Odden also has a fantastic supergroup with Manheim, Messiah, and Gluecifer’s Stu Manx dubbed Order. Tragically, Order’s first bassist, former Cadaver member René Jansen, who performed on Hallucinating Anxiety, passed away in 2014. Odden updates us on Order’s status, “We’re actually about to finalize our third album. We have, I think, 10 songs that we have started to mix and add some extra stuff to.”
In an unexpected yet welcome turn of events, Odden participated in the 2024 Melodi Grand Prix, Norway’s competition to determine who will represent the country in Eurovision, with singer Benedicte Adrian under the Mistra banner. “When we started to work on this project, I told Benedicte that there’s no pressure to succeed, or sell it for X-amount of money, or anything like that. I just wanted her to be creative. She’s super famous in Norway. So, she had a lot of people coming to her to suggest doing all kinds of different music, but she never met anyone who told her to just do what you want to do. We had no intention of being part of the Grand Prix stuff. The producer of the TV program asked if she wanted to do something because it was the 40th anniversary of when she won the whole thing. She was like, ‘Yeah, I have something brand-new, but I don’t think it fits.’ When he heard it, he was like, ‘This is perfect.’”
Odden has started a new podcast called Odden Podden, which is cause for delight, considering how eloquent and knowledgeable he is on music, having given speeches, seminars, conducted his famed Black Metal Sightseeing Bus Tour for Inferno Fest and Tons of Rock, participated in the 4-part TV documentary Helvete: Historien om Norsk Black Metal, etc. On a related note, Odden shares, “Back in 2012, I was creating a movie script together with a movie production company to make some sort of relevant fiction about the early scene, and we still have the script. I think they sent it kind of by accident to a Swedish producer who, at the time, was supposed to maybe be the director, and that guy is a friend of Jonas Åkerlund. I don’t think it had anything directly to do with Lords of Chaos… But I think those guys really didn’t capture anything real with that movie, which is kind of a shame.” The fact that so much misinformation has been spread about Norwegian extreme metal by Hollywood and others is all the more reason why Odden’s cinematic vision, clearly enriched by first-hand experience, would be enormously valuable.
“This summer, we had a big jam session with the original Cadaver drummer [Ole Bjerkebakke, who additionally handled vocal- and some of the lyrical duties for Hallucinating Anxiety], surprisingly. Because Dirk [Verbeuren] is with Megadeth until they fold in ’29, we’re looking into doing at least an album with the original drummer. He won’t be playing live anytime soon, but he still loves music. As long as the creative spark is there, we just want to do what we can to preserve the recordings and stuff like that. But Dirk is still very much a part of what we call the new wave of Cadaver, so we’re talking and texting almost every week about stuff to do. I have parallel plans to record different stuff with previous and current members. So, I think we’ll venture into a period where we are trying to make more new and different music. We’ll see where that takes us creatively and hopefully also try to play more shows around the world.”
When asked if the reissues will affect Cadaver’s next creative moves, Odden reminds us that, again, he had already been revisiting his old songs during his live sets and continues, “I’ve always been more into doing new stuff than into being nostalgic, but Hallucinating Anxiety is probably the album I feel most nostalgic about. When it comes to new stuff, that’s always going to be different. I don’t try to copy whatever I did back in the day, rather I try to figure out original approaches. Making music is something I do because I have the drive and feel like I have to. I feel more free now to do whatever I want in a way because I’ve done so many different things. The direction for new Cadaver albums is never set in stone before we start working because I always want them to be exciting.” We eagerly await Cadaver’s future victories.
(Purchase Hallucinating Anxiety from Listenable Records here, or prove yourself a poser. In addition, follow Cadaver on Instagram here, Anders Odden here, and Odden Podden on YouTube here.)
