An album that traces the entire history of the band, which is well illustrated on the beautiful cover by Eliran Kantor. The artwork, in fact, portrays Knarrenheinz (the NBC masked soldier who appears in many covers of the group) intent on playing them for good reason with the hooded executioner of ‘In The Sign Of Evil’. And although the latter seems to be succumbing, he continues to oppose tenacious resistance. An image that represents our musical proposal quite well, with the thrash from the themes of the war that took over the old school black from the horror lyrics of the beginning, which however never totally disappeared from the band’s DNA.
Returning to music on the album we find 17 songs, one for each published work. Angelripper and associates’ intention was to retrace the history of the band not necessarily through great successes, but also fished out underrated songs or never offered live. An exit that does not want to be a simple best of, but a real celebration of the group’s 40 years of activity. All the pieces have been re-recorded with the current formation while remaining faithful to the disc version without particular upheavals. This starts from the very first years, with our addicts to a black metal strongly inspired by Venom, with ‘Sepulchral Voice’And’After the Deluge’, which as imaginable here we find with a better sound performance. With this, however, I do not want to diminish the original versions of the aforementioned songs, which despite the immature recording of the time, still manage to be effective today by faithfully reflecting the attitude and ferocity that the band had at the beginning. We proceed with ‘Electrocution’From’Persecution Mania’And’Baptism Of Fire’From’Agent Orange’, the record that made the career of the people take off Sodom allowing Uncle Tom to leave the mine to finally be able to live with music. Yet’Better Of Dead’Followed by’Body Part’, with its death metal winks that are even more marked in this new version. The punking ‘Jabba The Hut’And’Gathering Of Minds’dated respectively 1994 and 1995, I am here to remind us how, even in the darkest years for thrash metal, Angelripper has not given up a millimeter with his proposal to reach triumphant to the present day.
Let’s proceed with the killer riff of ‘Book Burning ‘from’Red Code’And’Genocide’, with which we are catapulted into the Vietnam War, a topic dealt with by Sodom in their album ‘M-16’.
And so we arrived in the 2000s, when finally the thrash takes back the place it deserves in the music scene with i Sodom among the protagonists of this new rebirth. In fact, the German trio is not satisfied with living on income by resting on the laurels of its glorious past, but rather, it wants to show that it still has a lot to say with a series of deadly albums that are represented here with ‘City Of Gold’,’ S.O.D.O.M .’And’In War And Pieces’, devastating songs both in the original version and in this reissue.
Thus we come to the most recent albums: ‘Caligula’From’Decision Day’, in this new guise deprived of that touch of epicity to make it even more harsh and raw, and finally’Euthanasia’, practically identical to the version on’Genesis XIX’.
This concludes this new recording effort, an album which, as already mentioned, should not be understood as a best of, but as a celebration of the career of Teutonic thrasher historians.
Having said that, however, a collection with all the strengths and weaknesses of the case remains. In fact, apart from the initiative to re-record all the songs with the new line up, the disc does not offer big surprises or ideas of particular interest. As powerful and well-played pieces are songs that those who own the band’s records know well or badly already. A job that could essentially interest the most hardcore fans, who want to have all of their favorites, or those who don’t know them and want to get an idea about their musical proposal. The latter should be reiterated, however, that the pieces present, however good, are secondary pieces and many workhorses of the German combo are missing. Maybe to celebrate his forty-year career also involving the new line-up, a live album could have aroused the interest of a slice of the major audience (also because the last live license Sodom dates back to 2003).
ROKKERSPRESS 