Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Sodom - Tapping The Vein


Band: Sodom
Album: Tapping The Vein
Label: Steamhammer
Year: 1992
 
While I was undergoing my education as a novice headbanger in the history of heavy metal, Germany's Sodom was always included alongside Kreator and Destruction as the leading bands in Germany's glorious thrash renaissance of the mid 1980s. Much rawer then their counterparts, Sodom's early work showed off a dungeon-fi recording quality and a heavier Venom influence than their more technically advanced contemporaries, and they are now considered one of the seminal bands of the early European black metal influence.

They underwent a transformation into a ferociusly blunt speed metal power trio, ending up on the more devastating end of the thrash spectrum and having a hand in the creation of modern death metal. Their most important albums, Obsessed By Cruelty, Persecution Mania and Agent Orange chronicled this transformation from 1986 to 1989. Having basically done all that was required of them, the classic lineup of the band then fell apart, leaving bassist and vocalist Tom Angelripper (pretty sure it says that on his birth certificate) to cobble together one itineration of the band after another to continue marauding around the continent to this day. And as far as I knew until recently that was the end of the story.

But to completely write off the reaminder of Sodom's discography would be a grave mistake for any metalhead who knows exactly what they want to hear, and doesn't particularly care if it is groundbreaking or innovative or even relevant. Like Motörhead before them, Sodom has just kept on going, long after anyone except diehards was paying attention. And they are even less popular, but all the same keep out cranking out album after album of furious, technically competent death thrash. Yes, there have been more than a few duds that fail to rise above mediocrity, but there have been several good to great albums in the band's post-heyday such as 1995's Masquerade In Blood and 2001's M-16. Even their most recent album, 2010's In War And Pieces was a potent lead injection that illustrated why this band has kept on plugging. But the best of these is Tapping The Vein, an ultraheavy distillation of everything the band has ever done well married to a dense, ultraheavy production job and a furious batch of songs.

This is the band's most overtly death metal influenced recording, with downtuned riffs and machinegun doublekicks coming to the fore of the band's songwriting. Angleripper's growls are typically lower and more gutteral than on the 80s records, and the superior production brings to life the dead on performances of the three musicians. Coming off a tour with an in-their-prime Sepultura, it's no wonder a little of that influence rubbed off on Sodom, then in the midst of an identity crisis as many of the arena-thrash metal bands were being swept away by grunge and heavy alternative rock bands from above and more extreme underground metal bands below. The opening one-two punch of "Body Parts" and "Skinned Alive" make it clear that these veterans had no intention of retiring quietly though. Not quite as brutal as what Deicide or Morbid Angel were up to at the time, but several megtons heavier than radio-bound Metallica and Megadeth were at the time, songs like "Deadline," "Tapping The Vein" and "Bullet In The Head" rely on ultraheavy chugging riffs instead of fleet-fingered acrobatics or tacky choruses to make their point, and damned if they don't do it too.

So yeah, it doesn't quite live up to the band's classics, and sure, there are more extreme recordings out there. But if you're a fan of classic thrash, and don't mind when things get a little heavier and the production a little bit cleaner, you could do a lot worse than this album. Definately worth a few spins.