Out of the Frontline Trench

A year after Partisan, and before work on the next album began, Sodom put out this five-track EP on Steamhammer/SPV on 22 November 2019; Tom Angelripper presented it as a sign of life for the band's fans. The line-up was the one heard on Partisan: Angelripper on bass and vocals, Frank Blackfire and Yorck Segatz on guitars and Stefan "Husky" Hüskens on drums. Three of the songs were new. "Genesis XIX" was an advance track from the album that followed in 2020, while "Down on Your Knees" and the title song were made for this release. When the lyric video for "Down on Your Knees" came out on 18 October 2019, Angelripper explained that postcards and letters from his grandfather, found among his things after his death, and a few television documentaries had given him a rough idea of what it meant for soldiers to leave their trenches and face battles they might not survive. "Agent Orange", the title song of the 1989 album, was recorded again by the current band, and "Bombenhagel" closes the EP in a live recording from Gelsenkirchen in 2018. According to the sleeve credits, the four studio tracks were cut at Beatpoint Studio in Krefeld in May 2019, produced by the band with Klaus Spangenberg and mastered by Patrick W. Engel, while the live "Bombenhagel" was taped at the Veltins Arena in Gelsenkirchen in June 2018. The EP spent one week on the German album chart, at number 67. When the album Genesis XIX followed a year later, the same song sat fourth in its running order as the title track. By then the drummer had changed: Husky announced his departure in January 2020, and less than two weeks later Toni Merkel took his place.