Virtually impossible to find when originally released, Gehenna's Land Of Sodom Ep has been resurrected by A389 in a handsome new edition that combines an improved, re-recorded version of the 7" with a Cd containing the Ep tracks as well as the Under The Gravehill album, which up until now had only been available on vinyl. The disc and 7" are packaged in a customized gatefold jacket that reproduces the cover art from both releases and includes a poster insert.

The Land Of Sodom Ep is some of Gehenna's most vicious music, and that says a lot if you're at all familiar with the savagery that these maniacs unleash on their records. The record opens with the borderline-sloppy, bestial blackthrash of "I Am Your Tormentor" with it's Teutonic riffing, pounding almost blastbeat-speed drums and Mike Apocalypse's awesome throatripped snarl, the song sounding like some diseased mutation of early Sodom. Then "Possessed" crashes in, following suit but sounding even more crazed and chaotic, the bestial thrash exuding total savagery, total power. "Caveman" (which was also recorded by the Gehenna black metal side-project Sangraal) is rendered here with all of the frothing-at-the-mouth insanity that Gehenna is capable of summoning, a blazing blast beat ridden killgasm that ranks as one of their most vicious hate anthems. The b-side has the title track, and it's a completely different beast, a slow, lumbering blackened dirge, almost Sabbathian heaviness as the band grinds away on a series of simple, flattening riffs while strange manipulated voices and garbled speeches seethe below the surface; here, you can definitely sense the seed of what guitarist DC Grave would later develop into his similar noxious drugdoom project Witch-Lord.

Released in 2003, Under The Gravehill is more of the Gehenna's perfect fusion of West Coast power violence and crude bestial black metal. Gehenna are one of the most infamous and mythologized bands to ever come out of the American hardcore underground, with stories of stabbings, hardcore drug abuse, random violence, and other anti-social activities surrounding the band. Their music was a delirious fever-dream of visions of mass death, plague, global apocalypse and societal collapse set to some of the most misanthropic thrash ever. Upon The Gravehill was the bands last "full length", a fifteen minute long rampage of super short songs that typically clock in at around a minute and a half. Sloppy blast beats and thrashy slipshod drumming combine with primitive Hellhammer-esque riffs and metallic hardcore of the ugliest sort, fronted by the awesome strangled snarl of frontman/provocateur Mike Cheese. It all comes together into one of the most violent, ferocious sounds ever, laced with bits of gnarled feedback-soaked doom, the maniacal influence of Japanese metalpunks GISM, and weird ambient parts. The song "No One Will Ever Miss You" is one of the heaviest songs the band ever slugged out, a chugging slow motion gallop building to a devastating war anthem, and there's loads of filthy early black metal DNA that creeps into songs like "To Lay Waste", "Sadist", and "Trample This Earth". The band never sounded more metal than they do here, but their brand of thrash is still rooted in the most vicious, depraved strains of hardcore and punk.

Absolutely crucial for disciples of apocalyptic thrash and the "Holy Terror" circle of bands from the 90s.