This was actually planned for last week's companion to Bombenhagel, but when I noticed that Persecution Mania was missing I opted to do that one instead. However, Get What You Deserve does in fact... deserve... aha... some discussion. This is by far the wildest wild card in Sodom's long and illustrious career. Released in 1994 this can be considered a "dark nineties album" in general and not surprisingly, this sentiment is shared by a large portion of their fans. Many reviews point to an overt punk influence throughout Get What You Deserve. They aren't wrong per se, but they aren't completely on point either. This is a straight up crossover thrash record. Most of the punk influence comes from the drumming, aka welcome to the kingdom of the d-beat, the lack of guitar solos, and the abbreviated song lengths. Very rarely do we ever get above the three minute mark and more often than not, the songs hover around two and a half minutes or less. However, when it comes to the guitars, there's quite a bit of thrashing about and even some grindish moments. With the exception of the instrumental Tribute To Moby Dick and the slow and pulsing Eat Me!, the intensity on this record is as high as any other Sodom release.

This might sound odd, but to me, Get What You Deserve sounds like a fun album. What? Look at that cover! What kind of sick shit do you like to do for fun? Well, let's take a gander at the lyrical content for some of these songs. From a band who has released album after album about war, killing, war and killing, and killing and war, Get What You Deserve has songs about comparing a child predator to Jabba The Hutt, pooping on someone's chest, butt sex, and a song in German about an inflatable blow up doll. There's one more German song here, Erwachet! but I don't know enough German to figure it out. I also want to point out that the two German songs, the aforementioned Erwachet! and Die Stummel Ursel sound like the beginnings of Tom's solo career that he would see take off several years later. That leaves us with fourteen more songs, a healthy serving of metal to dive right into. The intensity begins with the title track and doesn't let up for four songs. How much you like this album will be determined by how much you like the drums. If the hard hitting punk d-beat style is ok with you, then you will find alot to like here. Jabba The Hutt is about being grossed about some blob who likes kids and eventually goes on a trip to Belize. Jesus Screamer rails about religious hypocrisy, Delight In Slaying goes into familiar territory and lastly we come to the blow up doll song. And that's just the first quarter mayhem! Die Stumme Ursel brings the levity and the drums here are very reminiscent of early punk style. You can almost start shouting along to Blitzkrieg Bop, that's how close it feels. Then the singing starts and you hear Tom's low and gravelly German voice. Eat Me! is a slow and crawling number that is designed purely to offend with pornographic lyrics that (hopefully don't) make you chuckle. There's another quick rapid fire blast of a handful of sub-three minute tracks. Unbury The Hatchet is the angriest sounding of the batch with Into Perdition being a close second. Tribute To Moby Dick is a pounding, slow to mid tempo instrumental and is the longest song on the album. Complete with whale sounds, this is pretty odd but it leads directly into the next track, Silence Is Consent, which is all about illegal whale hunting. The title means if we don't try and stop the poaching, our silence is giving these people the go ahead to continue their whale killing. Finally, the album ends with a cover of Angel Dust by Venom. If it wasn't obvious, them and Motorhead have been huge influences on Sodom even down to the fact that all three bands have been power trios for most of their careers.

Get What You Deserve is the obvious odd man out in Sodom's catalog. It's almost kind of odd that the extremely brutal, almost death metal like Tapping The Vein was released before Get What You Deserve. Usually, those types of brutal albums come after the "experimental" album which in this case would have been the punk infused Deserve. Masquerade In Blood would follow this album and it seems to be an album that bridges things from this era to the reformed heaviness of the Bobby / Brennemann era. But anyways, as far as dreaded "nineties albums" by thrash metal bands, this is nothing at all to be afraid of if you're a fan of the band's more traditional sound. The structure and nature of this really shouldn't be a shock to anyone who knows where Sodom's influences come from.