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THE ARCHIVES
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Morrigan's Pit has closed down as of November 2006. The site and its articles will stay online as an archive until September at least, but probably longer.
The Archives
2002-2006
» CD REVIEWS
» INTERVIEWS
» LIVE REVIEWS
» SPECIALS
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RAGE
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Matrix - Bochum (D)
October 11th 2003
http://www.rage-on.de
Rage had just released "Soundchaser" and to promote their new album they are currently playing a few unplugged/acoustic shows all over Germany. On these nights the new album is presented before the concert and afterwards people have the opportunity to get their Rage stuff signed or a pic taken with the guys.
The show in Bochum was supposed to start around 11 pm and luckily we've been there earlier because the band already started playing at 10.30 pm. The "venue" was quite small and thus packed with people. Rage more or less took seat in the middle of the room and the audience was standing around them, so it was quite an intimate atmosphere.
As soon as they started playing I immediately started to take some pics, didn't think of writing anything down and now I ended up not knowing what the opening track was. Sorry but I cannot for the life remember what it was, but I believe it was "After The End". The overall sound was pretty good even though I sometimes didn't like Victor's guitar sound as much. But that's a personal preference. Victor got help from a guest musician on guitar who was playing rhythm guitar and thus giving Victor room for soloing.
Next tracks in the setlist (yes, I remembered to write the rest of the titles down ;)) was "Turn The Page" and the new track "Flesh And Blood". The following song "Deep In The Night" was introduced by Peavy with a pun. ("Dieb In Der Nacht" - this apparantly is only sort of funny for Germans, so I'll leave that untranslated). During this song however, Peavy obviously had a hard time hitting the higher notes in the chorus, it sounded a little like he was suffering from a slight cold. Happens.
After an "acoustic edit" of "Falling From Grace" from the latest album the crowd started screaming "hey, hey" as if they wanted to incite them. Peavy smiled and showed himself perplexed about the atmosphere and the reaction on this "Balladen-Zeug" ("ballad stuff"). The band carried on with "Vanished In Haze" with Victor improvising a lot on guitar. Peavy, who as always was very talkative in between the songs, told us that this song turns out a little different each time they play it because of Victor's constant improvisation. It was a bit strange to see Mike playing drums for such an acoustic set by the way. He often pretended to hit the drums very hard but of course didn't. Needless to say he was also playing tricks with his sticks as he always does. Anyway, we then got to hear a brand new version (or so it seemed) of "Higher Than The Sky", probably the number one Rage song when it comes to participation of the audience. And Peavy didn't have to encourage the crowd to sing-along, that was happening naturally :)
Actually this song was supposed to mark the end of the set but of course everybody was demanding some more and I guess the guys knew that this would happen. So as an encore we got to hear a very, very strange version of "Don't Fear The Winter" that had been turned into a swing song, hehe :)
But still the crowd wasn't ready to leave and wanted Mike to play a drum solo.  While the band was discussing what to do "Mikey, Mikey"-shouts were repeated. In the end the band sat down again and started to jam a little until Mike included the usual drum solo that I'm personally a little tired of but the majority loved it. Then the set was definitely over, Rage didn't have any more acoustic songs to play. Still, according to the information I had before the show the set was supposed to last for 30 minutes only and in the end we were lucky enough to enjoy a full hour.
submitted by Cora 12.10.2003
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