Cauterized was formed by Shukri Adams in September 1998, in Cape Town, South Africa. Cauterized is a hybrid of death metal and grindcore primarily, with some thrashy elements thrown in, and lyrics often taking a political stand on everyday life matters.

First demo "Serratura" was made late 1998 as Shukri performing the music and Andrew Glower handling the vocals. Debut album "Tolerance through abhorrance" was made during 1999, with Shukri still handling all the music, and Richard Austin taking care of vocals.

In October 1999 Shukri began work on the follow-up to "Tolerance...". Two major improvements were planned for the band; guitar and drum sound. The former was tackled through the use of better recording techniques. For the latter, Shukri handed drum programming duties over to Antti Kivilahti, a long-time acquaintance of the band. Antti's joining gave the band a better drum sound, and more complicated and realistic drums, which in turn allowed the band's whole sound to improve and mature once again.

In May 2000 Shukri moved to Copenhagen, Denmark. The band's second album, "Retribution", was written from May to October 2000, and recorded in November and December. New vocalist was handling the vocals; Kim Jensen. In addition to this, a series of covers were recorded to be released simultaneously as a separate minialbum, "reTribute".

In late 2002 Cauterized started working on a split EP with finnish band Decay, and the split EP (which was a tribute to Dead Infection, 4 cover songs) was released in January 2003. Two tracks from both bands, Dead Infection covers. After this came a lengthy break.

Kim departed in early 2006, leaving Shukri and Antti seeking for yet another vocalist replacement - which turned out to be quite a hard task this time. After a bunch of candidates and delays a big decision was made: Shukri decided to handle the vocals. This resulted into recording of vocals for new album which had been under work for years. The album turned out to be "Fury17" and it was released after middle of May 2007.