For the last five weeks, we’ve slowly peeled Sodom’s In War and Pieces apart by presenting you, our faithful reader and hopeful subscriber (shameful plug), an advanced audial view of what the German legends have in store for 2011. We used war metaphors (terrible ones, really) and tried our best to come up with sensible (conjugate those fucking verbs!) German phrases to describe music from Sodom’s 4,001st full-length (12th for trues). We streamed thrashtastic songs like “In War and Pieces”, “Hellfire”, “Through Toxic Veins”, “Nothing Counts More Than Blood”, “Storm Raging Up” “Feigned Death Throes”, and “Soul Contraband” like we were fucking Spotify (not that any of us red-blooded Americans know what that is yet.) after a record-breaking IPO.
This week, we have our dirty hands on mid-album cut “God Bless You”. No, we won’t make you sigh with wrongly-used military crap, although this railgun thingie is sweet, or try anything in German unless we want to sound like we’re Austrian. Which we’re not. Anyway, Sodom frontman Tom Angelripper asks a very important question. Where is God in war?
“‘God Bless You’ serves as a respite while listening to this album. It also seems to be the continuance of a certain tradition—being able to play andante as we proved by early work like ‘Remember the Fallen’, ‘Marines’ or ‘Buried in the Justice Ground’. It’s the perfect interplay between the band and its producer Waldemar [Sorychta], who succeeded in extracting the essence out of the presented material and the musicians. A perfect interaction between musical and lyrical arrangement was generated.
‘God Bless You’ are the last words a soldier hears when he has to say goodbye to his beloved ones, because he leaves for war. But where is God? When he is needed? Could these three words be helpful? In the end, a soldier can only rely on his skills, comrades, the proper function of his equipment and his fortune to survive each mission. Not till then can he affirm that the hand of God did bring him back into the bosom of his family and home. The ones left behind are those, who didn’t have the privilege to experience God’s grace and shelter.”
“God Bless You”
[audio:https://www.decibelmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Sodom-God-Bless-You.mp3]
That’s not all we have in store for you Sodomites (sorry, couldn’t resist) the world over. Nope. We added a nice little incendiary cherry on top of the sputtering cans of “mommy I want to go home now”. That’s right. Each week, dB*** and SPV/Steamhammer will be giving away one (1) copy of Sodom’s In War and Pieces on blood red gate-fucking-fold vinyl. Winners have already been announced (see below).
What do you have to do?
1. Listen to Sodom.
2. Email us at this email: [email protected].
That’s it! Two steps and you could be a lucky vinyl-celebrating bastard. Include your first name, last name, address, and email in your message.
WINNER WEEK 1: Stephen M. from Belle, WV.
WINNER WEEK 2: Tim A. from Kettering, OH.
WINNER WEEK 3: Nevin P. from Berwyn, IL.
WINNER WEEK 4: Dustin B. from Monroe, LA.
** Sodom’s new album, In War and Pieces, is out January 11, 2011 on SPV/Steamhammer.
*** Fulfillment of contest prizes not by Decibel Magazine, The Deciblog or Red Flag Media.