Nuclear Blast
2012
1. House Wins
2. Twenty One
3. Forever Dead
4. Feel My Pain
5. Serial Killer
6. Psycho Terror
7. Destiny
8. Death Romantic
9. Black And White
10. Concrete Wall
11. Eternally
Rage are simply put one of the cornerstones of German power metal and are just iconic for people into the scene. The holy trinity of Rage, Running Wild, and Grave Digger have always gotten a good amount of listening from me and of course a new album from any of them gets my attention. Not to mention I have very much enjoyed the last couple from Rage.
Going into this one I did have a shred of doubt however. Listening to the title track and lead off single Twenty One really didn't do much for me. Hearing that one I just got an impression of forced heaviness. The song simply doesn't sound natural or right for the band with it's jarring attempts at speed and odd break downs. I basically reserved judgment though as it wasn't Bad and it's not unknown for a band to just pick a weaker track for a single.
Unfortunately, this is not just a case of a weak single. The best description I can possibly give of this album is 'in one ear and out the other'. The best moment of Twenty One seriously comes in the form of a redo of Eternally from the Nuclear Blast Allstars album and the other version was better. Kind of a sad statement.
The problem here just seems to be Rage trying to reach outside their recent formula that they've found with Smolski and not grasping anything new. Unless you want to call just not being as inventive with the guitar leads and not as powerfully melodic with the choruses something new. I just found it hard to latch onto anything here. None of these songs are bad, but not a single one is better than not bad either. At times the kind of blunt/forced heaviness shows up again on tracks like Serial Killer and Forever Dead, but mostly the songs just seem phoned in.
Twenty One is one of those albums that never does anything outlandishly wrong and it's a decent enough listen, but it never hits it home either. Basically, I'm inclined to call this a filler album which will be OK for Rage fans, but it's the band at nowhere near their best. I don't think this album has a worthy single or live addition on it really. Overall, this still sounds like Rage and that puts it slightly above average, but it is a below average release for the band. Not sure what went wrong here, but it seems like a case of them trying to fix what wasn't broken.
Highlights: Eternallly
Rating - 3.0/5
2. Twenty One
3. Forever Dead
4. Feel My Pain
5. Serial Killer
6. Psycho Terror
7. Destiny
8. Death Romantic
9. Black And White
10. Concrete Wall
11. Eternally
Rage are simply put one of the cornerstones of German power metal and are just iconic for people into the scene. The holy trinity of Rage, Running Wild, and Grave Digger have always gotten a good amount of listening from me and of course a new album from any of them gets my attention. Not to mention I have very much enjoyed the last couple from Rage.
Going into this one I did have a shred of doubt however. Listening to the title track and lead off single Twenty One really didn't do much for me. Hearing that one I just got an impression of forced heaviness. The song simply doesn't sound natural or right for the band with it's jarring attempts at speed and odd break downs. I basically reserved judgment though as it wasn't Bad and it's not unknown for a band to just pick a weaker track for a single.
Unfortunately, this is not just a case of a weak single. The best description I can possibly give of this album is 'in one ear and out the other'. The best moment of Twenty One seriously comes in the form of a redo of Eternally from the Nuclear Blast Allstars album and the other version was better. Kind of a sad statement.
The problem here just seems to be Rage trying to reach outside their recent formula that they've found with Smolski and not grasping anything new. Unless you want to call just not being as inventive with the guitar leads and not as powerfully melodic with the choruses something new. I just found it hard to latch onto anything here. None of these songs are bad, but not a single one is better than not bad either. At times the kind of blunt/forced heaviness shows up again on tracks like Serial Killer and Forever Dead, but mostly the songs just seem phoned in.
Twenty One is one of those albums that never does anything outlandishly wrong and it's a decent enough listen, but it never hits it home either. Basically, I'm inclined to call this a filler album which will be OK for Rage fans, but it's the band at nowhere near their best. I don't think this album has a worthy single or live addition on it really. Overall, this still sounds like Rage and that puts it slightly above average, but it is a below average release for the band. Not sure what went wrong here, but it seems like a case of them trying to fix what wasn't broken.
Highlights: Eternallly
Rating - 3.0/5
No comments:
Post a Comment