The Final Sign of Evil

The Final Sign of Evil is Sodom's re-recording of its first EP, In the Sign of Evil (1985): the EP's five songs played again, together with seven more that were written in that period or earlier but never officially released. It was produced by the band's webmaster, Thorsten "Toto" Hain, who explained the title as part of a plan to make In the Sign of Evil a complete album; in his view the seven additions were "not a real bonus" but the songs that would have filled out the album back in 1984. SPV's Steamhammer label released it in Germany on 28 September 2007 and in the rest of Europe on 1 October. Tom Angelripper made it with the two musicians who had recorded the EP with him in 1984, the drummer Chris Witchhunter and the guitarist Grave Violator. It is not quite the band's founding line-up, since the first guitarist, Aggressor, had left before the EP was recorded. According to Hain, Grave Violator had not been in a studio since the EP sessions, and Witchhunter's last recordings dated from 1994, for an unreleased project called Witchhunter. Witchhunter also changed some of his drum parts, so a few of the old songs sound a little different from the originals. Hain got the job after Grave Violator heard a demo he had produced for a side project of his own. Rather than work with Harris Johns or Andy Sneap, the band tried Hain out with two and a half weeks of pre-production in spring 2006 and then handed him the record. Of the twelve tracks, the second, fourth, sixth, eighth and eleventh are the EP songs; the other seven had never been officially released before. The Japanese edition followed on 26 December 2007, and SPV issued a double LP on 1 February 2008.