Band: Rage
Album title: Carved In Stone / Gib dich nie auf
Label: Nuclear Blast
Distribitor: PIAS
Release date: January 2009
Release: (2-CD) Box Set (Limited Edition).

German Metal scene monsters Rage were formed a quarter of a century, 25 years, ago…albeit under the initial bandname Avenger (under which they released an EP and a full-length album)…and you can be sure they will let you know about it! The band starts the year with the celebratory EP Gib dich nie auf…which our editor-in-chief got for his own collection in a box set also including the 2008 Carved In Stone album, which was heralded as the heaviest Rage album in over a decade – but let’s concentrate on the EP first!

The EP starts off in a same heavy mood as their last album, with the title track which was especially recorded for this EP exhuding that same energetic level. Sparkling guitar work, Rock-steady rhythm basis, and Peavey’s typical voice on top. Obviously, it’s sung completely in German, but that doesn’t change anything about the fact that this is a typical Rage song of the heavy type.. It’s followed by “Vollmond”, the German version of “Full Moon”…the same version you could find on the limited edition of the 2006 album Speak Of The Dead. The song’s opening may deceive you into thinking you’re gonna hear, but don’t be surprised to find it turning around into a real heavy track after all. Next up is the English version of the album’s title track, fittingly re-dubbed “Never Give Up”. The last heavy track on the album comes with “Terrified”, a song which was featured on the Nuclear Blast Allstars album Into The Light (issued in May 2007 as part of a 2-disc celebration of Nuclear Blast’s 20th year of existence, the procedings supervised by Rage guitarist Victor Smolski, whom also wrote the music). Follows an “Orchestral Version” of Carved In Stone’s album closing track “Lord Of The Flies”, the only track on that album which had orchestrations in the Lingua Mortis tradition. Finally, there’s new track and ballad “Home”, which features Peavey’s lone voice on top of languid music played by the Lingua Mortis Minsk Orchestra (a symphonic ensemble from Smolski’s homeland Belarus in Russia). The EP also contains a multi-media section, an “enhanced” part if you will, containing the live recorded video for Refuge, taken from the DVD bonus footage (the band’s performance at Wacken Open Air in 2007) that came with the limited edition of the Carved In Stone album…and something called “Carved In Speed (in reality an extended trailer for that samealbum).

As far as this box set is concerned, the added Carved In Stone album is really only the regular one…as is the EP, by the way, and if you’ve already gót the full-length, I very much advice you to just buy the EP. The only bonus you’ve got with this specific set, is the fact that you get a cardboard box (with a slightly changed front cover based on that of the EP’s, and a back cover to include the track-lists of both releases) to put ‘em in! I suppose you would have to be a real fan to go out and buy the EP (which in essence contains 2 songs in versions as you already know them, one in a reworked version, and three new songs of which one only differs from another through the vocals), you know, just to hàve everything done by that band you so strongly want to support. Of course, if you’re thàt kind of fan, maybe you’ll truly buy évery different release you can find (I used to know soomeone who was sùch a Metallica fan, he collected each version of every album he could get his hands on, including pressing versions…meaning he got himself a Benelux copy, a German copy, a Scandinavian copy, an American copy, etc…of each of the band’s LPs and CDs), and you’ll buy this cardbord thingy anyway. Personally, I only care to get myself the music involved, but hey…there àre such crazy people around, you know (not that I would deam it necessary to look down on you for that, okay…I’m somewhat of a weird record collector myself, and you’d damn well raise your eyebrows if you would know what I have in the house).

Okay, so the rating below only goes for the EP involved, see…well, it really goes for Rage’s music overall, I guess. The Germans hàve become equivalent for a certain quality and type of music (regardless of the fact that they occasionally flirt with the classical genre), and they hàve grown into a household certainty!

88/100

Tony.