Sodom - Agent Orange (1989)^{Release ID: 1570}

Agent Orange is a solid thrash album from these German legends, but it's nothing amazing. The title track is killer, that's for sure. There are a bunch of other tracks that are enjoyable too, such as Tired and Red and Remember the Fallen, but just as on Persecution Mania, there are a couple of tracks that let the album down, stopping me from calling it an absolute classic. Ausgebombt, while being a fan favourite for some reason, is extremely simple and not very interesting at all. The final track and cover song Walk Away is terrible. It's completely out of the spirit of the album and just not very well performed.

All up I'm going to give Agent Orange a generous 4. I don't see it as the masterpiece of thrash that others do but it's an entertaining release that's worthy of some attention.

By the time of the release of their 1989 classic, Sodom had left their early Venom-worshipping satanic black / speed metal style behind and had turned to full-on thrash metal with an (anti-)war theme. Coming off the back of '87's awesome Persecution Mania, the classic Sodom line-up of Tom Angelripper, Frank Blackfire and Chris Witchhunter managed to maintain the momentum with yet another of Europe's all-time great thrash albums.

This is a perfectly executed record and every single participant is spot on in their performance. Angelripper's bass drives the songs along mercilessly and while his vocals, in common with most thrash singers, aren't going to give Rob Halford or Bruce Dickenson sleepless nights, they are perfectly suited to the tone of the album, with their gruff rasping style. The drums are clean, on-point and the fills are fantastic. Blackfire's thrilling riffs are precise and his solos incendiary, a really underrated guitarist in the metal world in my opinion. This is absolutely a band on top of their game. The songwriting is excellent, with tempo changes that add some variation to the tracks without detracting from the album's overall aggression. The Vietnam War theme has always resonated with me too, being a bit of a military history buff to boot, especially with the album being released hot on the tail of movies like Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and Hamburger Hill.

Let's start with some context here.  By the time 1989 rolled around Sodom had been around for eight years.  In that time they had already treated us to their particular brand of blackened speed metal on In The Sign of Evil before hitting a more conventional thrash metal sound on Obsessed By Cruelty and their second full-length Persecution Mania.  With Expurse of Sodomy bridging the gap between the debut and the sophomore the band had already set themselves a reputation for delivering some ripping thrash metal with real menace and danger behind it.  By the time we got to album number three things really had taken off for the band with a live album and video (remember those?) already released.  

Agent Orange is the crowning glory of the bands (near) first decade of existence and for me their career as a whole.  For all of its obvious maturity and great structure it retained all of the raw energy that we had enjoyed on previous releases and honed this into a more consistent and robust form.  The opening and title track shows this perfectly, probably one of the best opening tracks I have ever heard, setting the tone and tempo for the majority of the album with a chopping riff from the word go.  By the time we get to Remember the Fallen we get a cool groovy riff running through the track which breaks up the pace of the record really nicely at the halfway point.

Throughout the album the guitar sits front and centre, with Frank Blackfire's riffs at the forefront of the mix and his leads similarly high in the proceedings also.  Angelripper's vocals sit perfectly just underneath the guitar in the mix with his bass audible enough to be a rumbling thunder that never quite cracks into a distraction to take away from anything else.  Tracks like Magic Dragon are a great example of the tightness of the band with all parts clear in the sound but none of them dominating proceedings to negative effect, the bass fills the lower stratosphere perfectly allowing the vocals, drums and guitar to occupy the upper realms and sound fully supported.

I think there's an argument to say that Tom's vocals would always give the band a blackened edge even at this developed stage of their career but the sound overall here is absolute classic thrash as the tempo changes between cutting riffs and galloping rhythms to give a real sense of variety whilst maintaining that thrash metal authenticity.  The performance of the sadly missed Chris Witchunter on the skins is superb, fully of energy and deft technique.

The punky vibes to Ausgebombt is catchy as fuck and on my CD version which is a reissue it is on CD2 twice as a live track and also as a studio German version so that track is never leaving my head in 2021 at least now.  My version also has a cover of Tank's Don't Walk Away which is a superb edition to the album at the end and I would say improves it even more than I first thought possible.

This album for me is pivotal in Sodom's career, firstly because I don't believe they have ever come close to topping it in terms of quality, intensity and variety.  Secondly the timing of this perfect record was so important for the growth of the band as I believe without Agent Orange Sodom would not be as important as they are today in the realms of their legendary status in thrash metal.  Better Off Dead which is the album that followed this is a pale effort in comparison and I have little memory of Tapping The Vein be anywhere near this record.  A simply essential thrash metal record that should be in every fan of the genres collection.

I've been revisiting this old favourite over the last couple of days. I thought it was pretty amazing back in 1989 & it's still a great record with loads of energy & a tonne of quality thrash riffs. In hindsight though, every track includes chuggier mid-paced sections that sound quite generic in comparison to the obviously spectacular up-tempo material while the song structures sound a bit jerky as the band have obviously pasted together widely disparate sections in a haphazard fashion e.g. "Tired & Red". There's not a lot of depth on offer however the simplicity of these songs actually works to their advantage by opening them up to a generation of beer-drinking metalheads looking for drunken anthems. I had so many good times screaming out the choruses to these songs which are all very catchy & easy to remember. I definitely prefer the rawer "Persecution Mania" but it's still a really fun album that sounds undeniably German.