Controversial album reissued

Jewish Telegraph, November 2021

EXTREME metal band The Meads of Asphodel have re-issued their controversial 2013 album Sonderkommando.
The album features new artwork by frontman Metatron, which he originally sketched at Auschwitz. The original cover featured a body being taken for cremation.
Metatron wrote the lyrics to the album actually at Auschwitz.
The band had caused controversy on earlier album The Murder of Jesus the Jew, but Sonderkommando was Metatron’s way of putting into words his feelings after spending three days at the death camp.
Metatron told the Jewish Telegraph in 2013 that he wasn’t trying to offend anyone.
“I live my life in peace and respectful of others. I also believe in the right of anyone to live in peace. I do not need religion to tell me this,” he said.
Metatron — named after the Jewish angel mentioned in Genesis — visited Auschwitz in November, 2011 with a friend “to look for myself beyond mere pages of a book or the visual interpretations of a lens.
“It was an extremely profound experience, one that made me realise this album had to be made. It really is hard to contemplate the mill of murder this place was.”
He added: “To really understand just a part of the Holocaust is harrowing, and I know I can never fully understand the horrors that happened, and no doubt if I were to even glimpse a small window in time, my reaction would be of a cowardly observer, as we all most surely are.”
The reissue includes two bonus tracks — Beneath the Shower Heads, Thou Totterest on the Brink of Hell and Life, Love, Hope, Death.
Other tracks on the album include Silent Ghosts of Babi Yar and Send My Love to Maher-Shahal-Hash-Baz.
The Meads of Asphodel’s next reissue will be The Murder of Jesus the Jew.