Metal

Steamhammer/SPV

September 30th 2022

Line Up:

Peavey Wagner – Vocals/Bass

Jean Borman – Guitar

Stefan Weber – Guitar

Vassilios Maniatopoulos – Drums

Tracklist:

1 – To Live And To Die

2 – Spreading The Plague

3 – The King Has Lost His Crown

4 – A New Land (Acoustic)

5 – The Price Of War 2.0

6 – Straight To Hell (Live)

Legendary German metallers Rage keep the momentum going with this six-song EP. Formed in 1985 their origins go back to the early 80s with Avenger and since then they have continued to release regular material that is consistently good. Are they Thrash? Are they Power Metal? Who cares they’re Rage and I’m just happy they exist. Some of the tracks were held back from the ‘Resurrection Day’ sessions as something special for the fans.

Kicking off with the mighty ‘To Live And To Die’ they’re mean and muscular (like me!) then the spidery riff of the title track takes over and they offer some quality power metal which continues ‘The King Has Lost His Crown’ featuring a stirring vocal from Peavey and some fine guitar work from both Jean Bormann and Stefan Weber. The acoustic’s come out for ‘A New Land’ which shows another side of Peavey’s voice. Hold on to your hats for some proper metal as ‘The Price Of War’ is given a modern-day kick up the rear and chugs along on a battery from drummer Lucky Maniatopoulos. We get some superb groove metal with ‘Straight To Hell’ Live from the Cave and shows Rage cannot be pigeonholed into any old metal genre.

A stop-gap EP until we get another full album of Rage metal, will do just fine and if the songs are as good as these then we’re in for a treat.