Rage

Any fans of this German power/speed metal band? I’d like to check out their catalog. Essential albums? Any lyrical concerns?

Best years imo are with Mike Terrana on drums and Viktor Smolski on guitar starting in 1999. Albums: Unity, Soundchaser and Speak of the dead. Also I enjoy Execution Guaranteed which is more speed metal then a lot of their stuff and The Missing Link. They have a ton of albums and some of them get real samey sounding but those are good starts if you ask me.

Was always one of my favorite bands back in the day. I had every album from Avenger (satanic/pre-Rage) through Strings to a Web. Their early era (Reign of Fear to Secrets in a Weird World) was hit and miss for me. Very different from what would come later. More speed metal, classic 80's metal. Peavey's vocals were much higher and could be off putting when he pushed himself. Perfect Man was my favorite early album. Great songwriting, some quirky stuff but endearing for me.

Reflections of a Shadow cam after those and was transitional.

Trapped, The Missing Link, Black in Mind, and End of all Days were the peak of their early powers. Those are THE classic Rage albums. Black in Mind is one of the best heavy metal albums of all time. It is a beast of an album! My screen name comes from a track on End of All Days (which has a different meaning for me today). Really dark topics and quite heavy. Peavey had it going. When they turned into a four piece from BiM you could hear the difference!

After this they moved into symphonic territory. I thought XIII was amazing. Ghosts was really good (had some faith based lyrics here. Maybe Peavey was searching during this time?). The entire band quit during these recordings and Victor Smolski and Mike Terrana stepped in to help finish the album.

The next era was a second wind for the band. Welcome to the Other Side kind of stumbled out of the gate but they nailed the next few albums. Smolski is a world talent (musically and as a race car driver) and Terrana is top tier himself. Soundchaser and Strings to a Web were my favorite from this era (Unity is big-time too).

Again, the band fell apart after this but I also left secular metal. I can't say much about the modern era.

Lyrical concerns? Peavey has an interesting, at times dark, sense of humor which showed early on (Supersonic Hydromatic, Death in the Afternoon). Overall themes have always been sci-fi, classic horror stories, paleontology (Peavey collects bones, particularly skulls). They broach on dark topics consistently but it's pretty clean. I honestly wouldn't remember much to be concerned about.

You ever read Scott Waters old review site, Nolifetilmetal? He doesn't keep it up now but it has a lot of reviews.

Thanks, guys! I’ll check out Soundchaser or Unity first, I think. 

Yep, love NLtM. I figured I’d get the opinions of our resident experts here, as well.

Pethead wrote:Thanks, guys! I’ll check out Soundchaser or Unity first, I think. 

Those two are definitely more melodic and progressive. When they came out they got a lot more mass appeal, for good reason. Can't go wrong on either.

The albums I listen to the most would be Execution Guaranteed, Perfect Man, and Unity. Of course there is a bit of nostalgia factor for the first two listed. There are a lot of the albums after 1990 that I never listened to, though. Gonna have to check out Black in Mind based on comments above.

New single

Somehow I never got around to checking Rage out, although I have that album by Lingua Mortis Orchestra featuring Rage from 2013 (also the Almanac debut). Also a semi-official Rage song called Terrified on a compilation CD. But last week I stumbled upon a new single, sounded really nice.

Definitely check out the new album, everyone. It’s a scorcher.

https://lotsofmuzik.com/rage-afterlifelines-album-review-by-curtis-j-dupree/