It may have been a childish response in a long time but when this album arrived with me and I saw the cover, it brought a big joyous smile to my face and a loud vocal exclamation, for I was like an 13 year old metaller again, experiencing once more that feeling when I first got a copy of ‘Agent Orange’. The album cover for ‘In War and Pieces’, is nothing short of a masterpiece. So many bands just don’t take the time any more to come up with interesting artwork, especially in this iTunes and download dominated era, so first and foremost Sodom, thank you for that! That’s a throwback to a better time, leafing through the racks in small record shops and suddenly finding an album by a little known band, that you end up buying with the logic that, ‘if the music’s as good as the album cover…’ As for Sodom themselves, well if you’re here, they really need no introduction. The only question is are they still as good as they ever were, or is time catching up with them as it has with some of their peers.

Whilst it could be argued that there is a bit more melody about Sodom these days, you can’t argue with the quality. Opening with the eponymous title track, we are delivered a wonderful piece of classic thrash with solid grooves mixing the precision of Kreator with the attitude and anger of early Slayer. Tom Angelripper is in fine form with his Araya-esque shouts, whilst Bernd Kost whips up a storm with some classic hard thrash riffery, in fact far more so than on any other Sodom album I can remember! Guitars really are all guns blazing here. It’s a neck snapping journey ‘Through Toxic Veins’ before we are reminded that ‘Nothing Counts More Than Blood’. Every one of these is a full on assault on the senses, taking control of my neck and head and commanding it to headbang along without any conscious decision to do so.

Angelripper delivers every syllable with anger, hatred and distain, threatening to set the world on fire, and you can right well believe him too! This album also contains a song dedicated to ‘Knarrenheinz’ the gas mask wearing mascot of Sodom, who can be seen coming to a sticky end on the cover. Sung in German, it’s also probably the fastest and angriest song on here, most in touch with their early work.

There’s nothing really new or inventive about the way they go about this album, and that’s one of the many reasons it is so bloody good. Sodom do Thrash metal, just like they have for the best part of the last 30 years, and that’s why we love them. There are no concessions for the scene crowds, no metalcore breaks, no clean melodic vocals, they just kill the way they have since we were all much younger; hard, fast and with ruthless efficiency. Where their peers have stumbled and fallen in recent years, they show no signs of slowing up any time soon. Sodomites rejoice, for ‘In War and Pieces’ is right up there amongst their best work with ‘Agent Orange’ and ‘Persecution Mania’. Fucking brilliant!

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