The Formative Years – Sodom Agent Orange
Persecution Mania was Sodom’s album that saw them leaving the confines of the Hellhammer / Venom inspired black metal underground and rise to prominence with a departure from speed metal, a transition to thrash and with their third album, i.e. Agent Orange, they found their stride with what became their trademark raw, rhythmic and straightforward approach to song-writing and a well-calibrated average song duration of around four minutes all peppered an underlying punkish feel.
Each song on Agent Orange has lasting appeal and thematically centred around the atrocities of war, it holds a timeless relevance which along with the great production courtesy of Harris Johns makes the album a complete listening experience.
Essentially Sodom’s biting, intricate, technical, catchy and ferocious riffs were the children of the marriage between the essence of what made Metallica’s mid-paced chugging cadence exciting around 1984-86, the angry appeal of Megadeth before the 1990s and deliberate nods to the oeuvre and grimy style of Motörhead.
While Sodom’s no frills approach carved a niche for themselves with their chaotic craftmanship and successfully established their brand as one of the Teutonic four in the pantheon of thrash metal, on international terrain they never seemed to get the appreciation they deserved to the scene being busy worshipping bands from the Bay Area.
