German thrash metal legends SODOM release their new single and video for the song "Friendly Fire". The track is taken from the newstudio album Genesis XIX, out now via Entertainment One ("eOne") in North America and Steamhammer/SPV in Europe.
Notes bandleader Tom Angelripper, "So, here it is ... my favorite on this album. I can hardly believe or indeed describe how much I love this song. I'm pretty sure it sets the direction for our next album. And in the meantime, I'm convinced that it's the clever sequence and combination of notes in our twelve equal system that makes music (generally) so diverse. Lord, I wish we'd known that back then. Often in a war situation, soldiers find themselves having to direct their weapons against their own comrades who are holed up close to enemy positions. These victims were accepted as part and parcel of the overall victory. Large numbers of supposed enemy planes were also shot down..."
View SODOM's "Friendly Fire" on KNAC.COM HERE.
From unadulterated thrash metal tracks "Euthanasia", "Dehumanized" and "Friendly Fire" to off-the-grid numbers such as "Occult Perpetrator", SODOM delivers a wide range of facets of their signature sound. This inventiveness also applies to the lyrics on Genesis XIX, with vocalist/bassist Tom Angelripper presenting, as usual, his very own range of subjects: "The Harpooneer" is based on Melville's Moby Dick novel featuring the obsessive Captain Ahab, "Glock N' Roll" is the story of a serial killer, "Waldo & Pigpen" is an homage to the same-named US fighter pilots, whose radio traffic during their mission in Vietnam has survived, and "Nicht mehr mein Land" describes the condition of western society.
Genesis XIX - recorded by Siggi Bemm and mastered by Patrick W. Engel - comes shrouded in the cover art of Joe Petagno of MOTORHEAD fame. The record will be released as a CD digipak, exclusive 2xLP (on translucent orange with opaque silver swirls - an eOne store exclusive), and digitally.
Following the first relaxation of the lockdown rules stemming from the 2020 pandemic, SODOM immediately returned to working creatively, which is one of the reasons why Genesis XIX has turned into precisely what the musicians had in mind. "This is definitely one of the toughest and most diverse studio recordings that SODOM have ever released," notes Angelripper. "Our riff suppliers, Yorck [Segatz] and Frank [Blackfire], are totally different types of musicians. Yorck is a died-in-the-wool metalhead who grew up with thrash music. Frank, on the other hand, also integrates blues and rock elements into his style, including the occasional Frank Marino or Rory Gallagher quotation, and writes songs that could have featured in the same or a similar way on Agent Orange. These are the diverse influences that make Genesis XIX what it is."
In addition, there's a third level that nobody expected after the - as Angelripper expressly emphasizes - amicable split with drummer Husky. "In [new drummer] Toni [Merkel] we've gained an awesome drummer. I'd even go so far as to say he's the best drummer that nobody had on the radar before now." Especially since Merkel also has, along with his furioso style, a number of other important qualities, namely his stints with death metal act SABIENDAS and a number of other black/death metal bands, where he played drums and doubled as a producer. Thus, he's been a dab hand at studio technology and recording. "We were largely autonomous during the production of Genesis XIX and were free not only to concentrate on working on new songs but also to come up with the right sounds. That was important because we use neither digital amps nor plug-ins but played all the guitar parts using proper Marshall tube amps." Following the preproduction, SODOM completed the work at the renowned Woodhouse Studio in Hagen, where sound engineer Siggi Bemm recorded Angelripper's vocals and mixed the album on an analog studio console.
