Rage - Carved In Stone

Published February 20 2008

*=Staff's pick	Carved In Stone* Drop Dead Gentle Murders* Open My Grave* Without You* Long Hard Road One Step Ahead Lost In The Void Mouth Of Greed Lord Of The Flies*

Genre	Power Metal	Peavy Wagner	Vocals
Tracks	10	Victor Smolski	Guitar
Runningtime	48 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Nuclear Blast	Peavy Wagner	Bass
Release	22 Feb. 2008	André Hilgers	Drums
Country	Germany	Victor Smolski	Keyboard
Similar artists	---

22 years in the game. 18 full studio releases. 5 EPs. 3 live recordings and 3 videos/documentaries. Plus extensive touring. That's the major part of the impressive list of all Rage achievements up to this point. And honestly, not much of what they have accomplished over the years can be said to fall short of any superlative you can think of when it comes to describing world class and unique metal. On the contrary over the years each new album has rather won over many more fans than has been lost.

So studio effort no 22, Carved In Stone, has a lot to live up to. Containing some major key elements like being produced by Charlie Bauerfind, a product of Peavy's song writing and Victor Smolski's blending guitar work, one might think that yet another success has been created. And indeed all familiar territory is revisited as the title track sets this new show on the road. With a symphonic intro that very well would have stood just excellent on it's own before André Hilgers presents himself as a worthy replacement of Mike Terrana, the traditional Rage opener is a fact. Fast, melodic, great vibrant riffing and a catchy memorable chorus. This promising starting dish is followed by Drop Dead that really doesn't continue to make my mouth water. It's fast and intense for sure and has a little touch of the old Black In Mind spirit in the chorus but overall lacks the involving components a great Rage song should have.

Gentle Murders is a good one in its own right with some arabesque undertones and such intentions are also found on Open My Grave but here the tempo is groovier and a notch more heavy metal oriented. Without You also is a very nice acquaintance where I really approve of the ballad style opening of the song before it starts building up to a true and genuine Rage metal jewel again.

But when you start delving deeper in the musical end of the matter in the second half you quickly discover that here there are more than just a couple of songs that don't really lift or stand out. They are pretty much all following the same recipe, grinding on in pure heavy metal pace, and without being bad they still showcase more than just an occasional detour in more filler like material. Lost In the Void with it's modern thrash mixed with some nice power/heavy Metal breaks is briefly an exception to this.

And apart from the intro of the title track there are no Lingua Mortis inputs on this album, for better and for worse. The closing Lord of the Flies has some orchestration too though but not to such a grand scale and is quite a different Rage number that might hint of what's to come in the future. But overall and unfortunately, history repeats itself for the second album in a row since Rage just as with Speak of the Dead don't quite manage to fill the second half with the same tasty goods as the first. Sure, it's growing on you with repeated listening but still not to the levels this band are so capable of.

That the album doesn't get a higher grade says way more about the immensely impressive high level of this unit than about their latest release in particular. If Carved In Stone had been a debut album from a new band on the scene it would certainly have impressed me more but taken into the vast Rage context and in comparison to the rest of their discography this one doesn't go the entire distance. There are old school Rage sounding songs reminiscent from the Trapped album, some Black In Mind and End of All Days tendencies here and there and the slower parts of certain songs aren't too far away from the XIII and Ghosts material. However, after several hours of listening I still can only judge it as "good". Without betraying the band's true and inner essence with the outings on this album I still feel that has a Rage fan you should crave and be entitled to much more.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
8,5	7	8	7,5	6

Summary
6,5 chalices of 10 - Mat