REVIEW: Sodom - The Arsonist

Goooooooood morning, Vietnam. Five years after Genesis XIX, Teutonic thrash veterans Sodom return with The Arsonist, another salvo of amphetamine-tempo and scorched-earth heaviness, and it’s about time too. Lasting longer than your dad’s M-65 field jacket, Sodom have long specialized in a style of thrash that feels like the ratatatat of an AK-47, much-lauded albums like Agent Orange and In the Sign of Evil secured their rightful place in the Euro-thrash pantheon. If you’ve got a buddy into thrash, chances are they’re into Sodom, headbanging enthusiastically to songs about napalm, phosphorus grenades, and other such atrocities of war. But the band doesn’t aim to moralize; they prefer the well-worn adage: war isn’t about who’s right, but who’s left. This latest jig features a hell of a hard album cover; a burnt skeletal man touching a forlorn GI sorrowfully whilst they’re being towered over by the classic Sodom figure in gas-mask galore, armed with a goddamn flame-throwing M-16 rifle. Say what you want, but they never ever compromise with their album artwork.

Production is a point of pride this time around. The drums, tracked by Toni Merkel, were recorded using a 24-track analog tape machine, a rarity in today’s DAW-dominated workflow. For those not in-the-loop with music production, the 24-track tape is a way that artists recorded music before the advent of digital recording which has become the norm. Frontman Tom Angelripper says that it’s; “No plastic!” And to be fair, the drums do cut through the mix nicely, with a rich low-end and crisp cymbal peaks that give the cymbals a vintage smear that stands in contrast to the razor-sharp sample layering you’ll find in modern metal drums. It still finds room to breathe more than the Pro Tools gridlocked norm. But let’s be honest: will the average listener even hear the difference, or even care? This isn’t Pet Sounds, and it won’t be a headphone-testing record. It’s really not that noticeable unless you’ve got your ear trained on it. Still, there’s a sincerity in the effort that’s hard not to respect. But even so, they probably could have just finessed this thing on a 16-track tape if they wanted a more noticeable analogue sound - it punches, but it doesn’t exactly bloom.

With all that hype on production, expectations were high. As for the music… it tends to go on a bit. Thrash has been criticized by fans of other genres for being near-mindless skank beats over shredding guitars, and that’s a pretty apt description of what you get here. It’s a little bit disappointing as Agent Orange guitarist Frank Blackfire has been back on lead guitar duties since 2018. Though through it all, there are some standouts. The opener, ‘The Arsonist,’ is a nice soundscape reminiscent of Megadeth’s ‘The Threat Is Real’ before it plunges headlong into the audio jungle. Still, there are highlights. ‘Battle of Harvest Moon’ references a Vietnam War-era joint operation between the U.S. Marine Corps and ARVN forces in which a load of marines had to be pulled out of combat due to trench foot from waddling through rice paddies all day. Exciting. And no -  flamethrowers were not involved.

The next song ‘Trigger Discipline’ is a stand-out, sounding like a combination of In War And Pieces and something from Repentless. The song is presumably about some mad bastard shooting anybody he sees while yelling about his perceived lack of trigger discipline in something that is so camp it ends up in the realm of comical. Among other highlights are songs like ‘Witchhunter’ which is a tribute to their late drummer Chris Witchhunter, ‘Gun Without Groom’ which best showcases the analogue drum production Sodom are so proud of, ‘Taphephobia’ relates to the fear of being buried alive which nearly everyone can relate to and has a brilliantly devious riff, while ‘Return to God in Parts’ rides a fast D-beat rhythm over galloping power chords, a nod to their earlier offerings to be sure. But despite the peaks, the album never quite catches fire. It smoulders, sputters, and seems to just fade into the background after a while. There’s little here to challenge the listener or push the genre forward. Tracks bleed together in tempo and tonality, offering little dynamic range or structural risk-taking and you end up with what is essentially white noise.

Credit where credit is due though, Tom Angelripper is in his 60's now, but he sounds almost exactly the same as he did 10 or even 20 years ago, so there’s no keeping that man down. The machine gun guitar and bass work here isn’t exactly extraordinary, and doesn’t seem to stray far from the well-treaded thrash path, but does a serviceable job to stop this album from becoming an overly dull listening experience. The band has nothing to prove, they’ve already got many classics under their belt and are well beloved. Is it too late for a little revamping? Potentially, but in the end, The Arsonist is… fine. It won’t redefine thrash, nor will it convert any prospective new fans. But if you’re already in the trenches with Sodom, you’ll find enough to crank up the volume and lose some of your hearing over. And when the tour rolls through town and they’re firing away at these songs whilst you’re two-stepping in camouflage in the pit; will you even care?

Score: 5/10

The Arsonist was released on June 27th 2025 via Steamhammer/SPV.

Words: Kiarash Golshani

Photos: Sodom