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RAGE
Spreading The Plague EP

Steamhammer (2022)
Rating: 8.5/10

Veteran German metallers Rage were one of my favourite acts in the 80s, delivering such steely gems as Reign Of Fear (1986), Execution Guaranteed (1987) and even more so Perfect Man (1988) and Secrets In A Weird World (1989). Sadly, I lost touch with their output after 1990’s Reflections Of A Shadow, but that’s more a reflection of my tastes at the time and how the 90s shifted.

I take my hat off to Rage for trudging on through such a confused decade when grunge and alternative rock had taken over, and to some extent metal had become watered down. It has been argued from some metal fans that the 90s did the metal genre a favour by forcing it back underground where it belonged, but for me, like a lot of things at the time, things were never quite the same as the fog-drenched 80s.

Even so, Rage battled on and here we are, seemingly in another world where the band has somewhat become a more underground version of, say, Accept, or even Sodom, Kreator and Destruction. But if this new outing is anything to go by then frontman Peter “Peavy” Wagner and company are the leaders of the pack, because Spreading The Plague is an excellent EP which has prompted me to visit the band’s back catalogue from the early 90s onwards.

Spreading The Plague is an infectious heap of steel that effortlessly marries thrash, solid heavy metal and, dare I say it, some rock ‘n’ roll aesthetics without ever sacrificing weight. If you want hard hitting thrash then ‘The King Has Lost His Crown’ will suffice, if you want soaring melodies yet angular, driving and abrasive groove metal then slap on the title track, and if you want deftness and subtlety then check out the acoustic rendition of ‘A New Land’.

This EP boasts six tracks, the last song being a live version of ‘Straight To Hell’, but elsewhere you get the chugging fury of opener ‘To Live And To Die’ and the brutal bass rattles of juggernaut ‘The Price Of War 2.0’ (a re-recording of the song that first appeared on the band’s 1995 album Black In Mind), both ultra-heavy compositions fuelled by axe men Stefan Weber and Jean Bormann who joined just two years ago.

Out of the rubble of a pandemic Rage has emerged even harder. Last year’s Resurrection Day full-length was just the start in clearing away the debris and now Spreading The Plague is the soundtrack of a band that has somehow drifted through the decades without the credit it deserves.

Neil Arnold

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