Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Rage
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release: 2014
Rating: 4.5/5
The German metal veterans Rage from Hamburg hit a full 30 years this year. Bands that are »well established« usually mark milestones like this with special releases! Rage belong in that league too, having kicked off their rich career back in the first half of the eighties under the name Avenger. Usually, anniversaries like this bring us »best of« compilations, or compilations of re-recorded versions of the iron-clad repertoire. But Rage decided to stand out from the average, so they took a somewhat different route. They put together a set of 30 tracks, hauled out of forgotten attic archives where they had to wipe off a thick layer of dust. It’s mostly demo recordings of various ages, plus three bonus tracks that, until this release, were only available on a strictly limited edition of the studio album »Soundchaser« (2003). The collection of demos thus spans the band’s career between 1984 and 2014. In that time Rage have put out a whopping 22 studio albums, the latest of them, titled »LMO«, just last year.
The thick booklet of this hefty double-CD »sandwich« comes with an archive photo gallery of rare shots. Rage boss Peter »Peavy« Wagner made sure that former Rage drummer Mike Terrana, who drummed for Rage between 1999 and 2006, doesn’t appear in any of the archive pictures, which is completely understandable, since Terrana didn’t part with Peavy and Victor on rosy terms. Some of the demos are also »retouched«, such as the 2003 demo of the song Soundchaser, where Rage left everything in the original untouched except the drums, which were re-recorded by the band’s current drummer Andre Hilgers.
The tracks aren’t lined up in chronological order on this compilation, which may bug quite a few people. On the other hand, given how the band’s sound and style evolved over the years, a chronological order would mean you’d only spin one disc or the other (depending on your taste), because the gap in quality between them would be too big. As it is, the two discs carry equal weight in terms of quality. From the modest but fiercely committed beginnings of old-school German heavy metal »kick-ass« stuff, to the furious sonic firepower of the first half of the nineties, with the great Manni Schmidt contributing the guitar parts, all the way to the discovery of blending in symphonic elements (the collaboration with the Prague orchestra Lingua Mortis) with a wound-up, at times downright progressive flavor of introducing certain sonic finesses, which Rage reached thanks to the arrival of the brilliant Belarusian multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger Victor Smolski. Even though the compilation covers the band’s career across three decades, most of the tracks date from the new millennium.
As expected, the sound on some of the demos is of lower quality. In situations like that it’s the bass lines that suffer most in the sonic picture, meaning the low end, so in places (on certain demos) the sound is boomy. So you can’t demand production perfection in the sound separation from this compilation. The demos are an interesting document, because they depend on the first attempt. Many of them date from the time when the band rehearsed the tunes together and then tried them out in the studio with real team spirit. So it’s not hard to spot the swings in quality between them, which depend mostly on Peavy’s vocal form on the day, as well as on how tight the members were as a unit. The demos naturally show the colorful development of Peavy’s vocal range over the last three decades of the band’s career. It’s clear that with the invention of mp3 files, the value of the individual contributions of each band member came into play. »Copy-pasting« the building blocks allowed greater control over the sound and style of the songs. That shows especially in the newer, post-millennium demos, which reach exceptional quality already at the pre-production stage.
One of the biggest treats on this compilation is the demo from the days when Rage were still called Avenger, for the song Assorted by Satan. The recording dates from 1984. »Peavy« approached this document with extra dedication. Every track on this compilation carries special historical value for Rage, so the booklet includes a story for each one, revealing the background to how these demos came about. And to make this »sandwich« something truly special, the band tucked in a live DVD too, capturing Rage’s entire set with the Lingua Mortis Orchesta at the Czech festival Masters of Rock, on July 12, 2013!
For fans of the band this release is practically a must, since it will take them through chapters of the band’s history that have never been opened before!
Lineup
Peter “Peavy” Wagner – vocals, bass guitar, acoustic guitar
Victor Smolski – guitar, keyboards, bass guitar
Manni Schmidt – guitar
Jochen Schröder – guitar
Alf Meyerratken – guitar
Thomas Grüning – guitar
Andre Hilgers – drums
Mike Terrana – drums
Chris Efthimiadis – drums
Jörg Michael – drums
Production
Rage
Track list
1. Anybody Home?
2. Mystery Trip
3. In Union
4. Long Hard Road
5. Full Moon (international version)
6. Nevermore
7. French Bourrée
8. A Perfect Day
9. Enough Is Enough
10. Here Comes the Night
11. Spiritual Awakening
12. Lost in the Void
13. The Missing Link
14. Another Kind of Madness
15. Down to the Bone
Disc 2
1. The Speed of Sound
2. Darkness Turns to Light
3. Death Is Alive
4. Gentle Murders
5. From the Cradle to the Grave
6. Refuge
7. Fugue No. 5
8. Last Goodbye
9. Dirty Wings
10. The Pit and the Pendulum
11. Waterfalls
12. Heads Off
13. Assorted by Satan
14. Shame on You
15. Soundchaser
