While 2020 was a year for the history books for all the wrong reasons, I’d go so far to argue the year was not without its highlights. One such highlight: Sodom came roaring back with a new lineup and their finest album since 2001’s M-16 in Genesis XIX. With all due respect to the albums that fell in between this 19 year gap, there was something about Genesis XIX that really catapulted it to that upper echelon of the Sodom catalog, a level of hunger and savagery that, while always present, hadn’t been unleashed to this extreme in quite some time. It left myself and many others wondering: What does the future have in store for this iteration of Sodom? Well after five years of celebrated live shows and assorted sampler EPs, we have a proper answer in the form of their latest full length, The Arsonist.
In many ways, The Arsonist picks up right where Genesis XIX, standing tall as a ripping new collection of Sodom ragers, while also doubling as a sort of musical retrospective of the band’s storied career. While thrash, speed, and unadulterated metallic warfare has always been at the forefront of Sodom’s sound, they’ve always executed such with varying flavors thrown in along the way, making The Arsonist the type of album that could only come from nearly 45 years of experience. Just like last time around, Herr Tom Angelripper and company (guitarists Frank Blackfire and Yorck Segatz, drummer Toni Merkel) are out for blood, getting right down to business from the very beginning.
The opening “Battle of Harvest Moon” sets the tone for this unrelenting release, assaulting the listener with that brutal thrash formula made famous on M-16. Rapid fire verses and knuckle-dragging choruses engage in combat like enemy fighter jets, leaving us in the middle of the blitzkrieg. Other songs following in this meat and potatoes formula include “Gun Without Groom”, “Sane Insanity”, and the closing “Return to God in Parts”, each one its own unique and merciless strike upon the senses. Indeed, if you’re going to be singing about subject matter as intense as war (and few have as long as Sodom), one needs an equally intense soundtrack. Sodom answers the call with hefty riffage, machine gun drumming, and a colossally crushing production.
While roughly half of The Arsonist falls into this M-16 Jr. vein, there’s so much more to be explored! The devil-thrashing “The Spirits That I Called” and black ‘n’ rolling “Witchhunter”, the latter a homage to Sodom’s fallen OG drummer, sound like throwbacks to Sodom’s earliest black metal days. The lumbering “Twilight Void” sounds like a distant cousin of proto death/doom epic, “Christ Passion”, while groove-heavy “Scavenger” and crossover-crazed “A.W.T.F.” would sound at home on any of the band’s wrongfully oft-maligned mid ’90s albums (i.e. Get What You Deserve (1994), Masquerade in Blood (1995)). However, the title of choice cut is awarded to “Taphephobia”, which of all of Sodom’s Persecution Mania throwbacks, might be their most convincing yet. I can feel those riffs ripping through my skin like shrapnel upon the battlefield, and it feels GOOD!
Not any better or worse than Genesis XIX before it, The Arsonist is yet another highly respectable bullet Sodom can add to their chamber of certified thrash classics. The brute force of this new collection makes the prospect of a tentative hiatus (at least from the live stage) all the more upsetting, but I have to end it to them for always doing things their way, whether I like it or not. Unlike so many of their peers, this is a band who has never kowtowed to here today, gone tomorrow trends or mass musical appeal, and The Arsonist is no exception. Crank the volume dial to 666 and let this beast of an album burn!
8 out of 10
Label: Steamhammer
Genre: Thrash Metal
For fans of: Slayer, Kreator, Destruction