Tapping the Vein

This is the first album with guitarist Andy Brings, who joined in 1991 at the age of twenty, while he was still at school, and who wrote and recorded his first record with the band here. According to Tom Angelripper, the songs came together quickly once Brings had joined, and the band took no notice of what other groups were doing. The drummer is Chris Witchhunter, the band's original drummer, and this is the last Sodom album he played on. Harris Johns produced, recorded and mixed it between 16 May and 12 July 1992 at Dierks Studios III in Cologne and at Musiclab in Berlin. Witchhunter wrote the words to "Body Parts" and "The Crippler", Brings those to the title track and the closing "Reincarnation", and Angelripper the rest; "Wachturm" is sung in German. The cover illustration is by Dieter Braun and Jürgen Huber, and BMG's announcement of the 2024 reissue called the record Sodom's "blue album" after its colour. The same text says fans often describe the record as Sodom's death metal album, even though none of the three was a death metal listener then. Steamhammer (SPV) released the album in August 1992 on CD, LP and cassette, along with a limited digipak CD, SPV 087-76542-L. It entered the German album chart at 98 on 21 September, rose to 56 on 5 October and stayed for nine weeks. Century Media released it in the United States, and the Japanese CD was TECX-25342. Witchhunter's last show with Sodom was in Cologne in 1992. BMG's reissue of November 2024 paired a remaster of the original with a new mix by Brings and alternative takes of three songs, and its largest edition adds three 1992 concerts, in Tokyo, Düsseldorf and Cologne; that reissue reached number 3 in Germany.