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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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Zeche - Bochum (D)
January 25th 2004
http://www.rage-on.de
"From The Cradle To The Stage" was the motto of a couple of shows Rage played to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the band. And on the occasion of this review I counted the number of Rage shows I've seen over the years and if I made no mistake, this actually has been my 20th Rage gig, hehe. What a funny coincidence :) The show in Bochum was sold out and was filmed for an upcoming DVD, so there were plenty of cameras all around.
At 7 pm an intro started, the band entered the stage - and sat down. "We're the support of Rage", Peavy said. The reason for this is simple: Rage played a brief acoustic set before the regular show. When the latest album "Soundchaser" had been released, Rage had done a couple of these acoustic shows (see our archive) and since people seemed to like it, Rage had the idea to play one here again. Again Victor got support on guitar, this time by backliner Jesus. My friend Paddy who had seen the show a few days earlier had already warned me that Peavy was suffering from a cold, but even though you could clearly recognize he had some problems with singing I thought it wasn't all that bad. Mike once again proved that he's a good showdrummer by presenting his muscles while playing some kind of rattle, hehe. No idea what exactly that thing was...for the Germans: Peavy called it "20 EUR-Krachmachmaschine" (translates to 20-EUR-noisemakingmachine) :) That was also about the time when Peavy  announced he would have to talk English later on during the regular set because the show was being filmed and released world-wide. As much as I like my metal really heavy and loud: I do love acoustic stuff just as much and the acoustic set could have lasted a little longer for my taste (see setlist).
setlist acoustic set:
Intro
Deep In The Night
Vanished In Haze
After The End
Wake The Nightmares
Turn The Page
After a break in which the crew did their job on stage, Rage came back on stage, without an intro this time but Mike asking "Are you ready to rock?". Well, of course we were! Especially due to the fact that the show was filmed, people tried to gain the cameras' attention by crowdsurfing and were extremely active in general, even though I must say that this has been the case as well at other Rage shows where no cameras have been around.
Rage started the set with "War Of Worlds" which was followed by "Great Old Ones", both tracks from the current album "Soundchaser". Even though Peavy kept talking to the fans in between the songs, I still have the feeling that he's usually talking a lot more when communicating in German...but maybe I just found it strange to hear him talking English to us ;) Anyway, the first time he was really talking was when he was telling a little about the 20th anniversary and about the time when his band was called Avenger. And no anniversary show without a nostalgic touch, so the next song was an old Avenger song, "Prayers Of Steel". The instrumental "Unity" was introduced as a song written by Victor and "inspired by his hobby" - Victor is a semi-professional racing driver. Right after that song the stage was Mike's. I was expecting yet another 20 minutes drum solo but only after a very few minutes he lost his temper over some cymbals that had loosened and the solo was over. Hm, didn't really know what to think about that. Later in the set during "Invisible Horizons" it became VERY obvious that Peavy had problems with his voice....it was impossible for him to sing that old higher pitched stuff and I felt so sorry for him when he tried his best to do just that. Also Mike was still swearing behind his kit. Right before "Flesh & Blood" Peavy was handed some tiny puppet of which I think it was Animal from the Muppet Show and meant for Mike in the first place.  Peavy stuck it to one of his microphones (he had two: one in front and one on one side of the stage). Then it was time for Victor to take over the stage and so he did with his guitar solo. A few songs later Peavy said that there was also another anniversary to celebrate: 5th anniversary of Rage in the current line-up! As you can probably guess by looking at the impressive setlist (two encores) not all the songs were played in their entirety but Rage still played around 130-140 minutes!! (I didn't look on my watch all the time, I wasn't bored after all, hehe). Needless to say that the highly anticipated "Higher Than The Sky" marked the end of this show: all of us had been singing the chorus already before the first encore and now finally we were offically requested to scream our lungs out!! ;) The band smiled, some more pics were taken and they waved good-bye.
The first people were already leaving when Mike came back and said he would have to repeat the drum solo as he had encountered some technical problems during the set and they needed to shoot it again. So Mike did his drum solo again (which still turned out pretty short compared to the others I've seen in the past), the band once again came back on stage and then finally waved good-bye. Thank you Rage!
setlist regular set:
War Of Worlds
Great Old Ones
Paint The Devil On The Wall
Sent By The Devil
Firestorm
Down
Prayers Of Steel
Suicide
Days Of December
Unity
drum solo
Enough's Enough
Invisible Horizons
Set This World On Fire
Flesh & Blood
guitar solo
Soundchaser
Straight To Hell
Back In Time
Refuge
From The Cradle To The Grave
Black In Mind
Solitary Man
Don't Fear The Winter
All I Want
Higher Than The Sky
submitted by Cora 26.01.2004
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