Out of all the classic German thrash metal bands, Sodom is arguably the one that found the best balance between sticking to their guns and evolving their sound. Having said that, their previous original studio effort ‘Genesis XIX’ (2020) had a certain looseness that I didn’t think benefit their sound. It was a fine album, but it felt like a significant step down from its predecessors. ‘The Arsonist’ does a great job at proving the current Sodom line-up’s worth without feeling like a massive course correction. If you like vicious German thrash metal, ‘The Arsonist’ should be right up your alley.

Evolution is difficult when you have to operate within the admittedly fairly strict boundaries of thrash metal, but Sodom was always a shining example of how to do it. They managed to tighten up their sound fairly early on, and the albums with Bernd ‘Bernemann’ Kost on guitars had a melodic depth that did not sacrifice any of the band’s rabid aggression. The return of guitarist Frank Blackfire excited a lot of fans, but the first few releases after his return felt like a bit too much of a throwback. ‘The Arsonist’, on the other hand, sounds like Sodom doing what they do best in the twenty-first century.

Overall, ‘The Arsonist’ sounds like a logical continuation of ‘Genesis XIX’. Its focus is on the more aggressive side of Sodom, their punky Motörhead roots being clear multiple times, but the album also frequently sounds like it could have been the missing link between thrash metal and very early death metal, many of the songs featuring tremolo picking parts that would not have sounded out of place on the first batch of death metal releases. Even the production, while obviously of this time due to how clearly every instrument can be heard, has a distinct old school feel to it.

The middle of the album is where ‘The Arsonist’ is best. ‘Battle of Harvest Moon’ is a great opener, but the album really hits its stride when ‘Witchhunter’ rolls by, an obvious homage to their late drummer Chris Witchhunter. It’s a Teutonic thrasher that I would have called primitive, were it not for the tight playing. The denser ‘Gun Without Groom’ is even better, and the simple, yet brutally effective ‘Sane Insanity’ just works really well. Later on, the dark, almost ominous, but no less aggressive ‘Twilight Void’ is a true highlight. The biting ‘Trigger Discipline’ was the right choice to be the first single.

If I had produced ‘The Arsonist’, I would have recommended the band to cut one or two songs, because nearly fifty minutes is a bit long for this type of thrash metal, and it does feel like some parts meander a bit. Apart from that though, ‘The Arsonist’ is exactly the type of album I would want Sodom to make in this stage of their career. The album is another case were Sodom proves that you don’t need to modernize your sound to move forward, and you don’t need to make the same album over and over again to stay true to yourself.

Recommended tracks: ‘Gun Without Groom’, ‘Twilight Void’, ‘Witchhunter’