Ελληνικά
Genre: Heavy/Power/Speed
Country:Germany
Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Year: 2016
Excellent Timing is essential in many if not all areas of this life. From a good joke to the release of a record it’s highly important to decide when to push operations or when to start the record’s circulation in the market. Now you tell me that Time is something fluid, especially if we are talking about (in the broadest sense) Heavy Metal… Still, the very good “The Devil Strikes Again” and number 22 in the Rage career, sounds like it should had been released 18-20 years ago…
Based on a mixture that has as basis on one hand the song writing formula of the last decade in which they released both good (“Strings To A Web”) and weak (“21”) albums, although these records had personality and a dynamic and on the other the (successful) recipe which inspired the now classic “Black in Mind”, the final result could be a natural continuation of the “End Of All Days”, so it could have came out somewhere in 1998-1999. But because we are not here to set the group’s timetable or to complain, let’s concentrate on the music part.
Armed with the great chemistry between the new members and the bonding brought by the tour of celebrate the 20 years since the release of “Black In Mind”, the fresh air and excitement brought by the two new members (Vassilios “Lucky” Maniatopoulos on Drums and Marcos Rodríguez on guitars) and – why not? – the concerts with Refuge to remind their magnificent past, Peavey Wagner composes a still very good album that honors the past and heralds a promising future for him and his new Rage .
The guitars are sharp and the production is modern while Peavy sounds extremely fit and cheerful. What stands out are clearly crafted choruses, although I don’t know if the crowd is still looking for the hit song that will be sung in 10 years from now at concerts. As a record though, it has its moments and stand-out tracks that will get into the next tour’s setlist rightfully; not because it imposes the record’s promotion.
Personally I liked the title traack and the single “My Way”, I thought the second single “War” was a bit average, while I was very impressed by “Ocean Full of Tears”, “Deaf, Dumb and Blind”, “Spirits of the Night”, ” Times of Darkness” and “the Dark side of the Sun”… well the entire side B of the record!
4/6
