Rage - Welcome To The Other Side (2005) - http://www.rage-on.de/



Rage is slowly, but surely becoming one of my favorite Power Metal-bands. Albums like Soundchaser and Unity must be tried by any fan of the genre, but what about Welcome To The Other Side, the album released a year before Unity? Is it as good?

While it's not as good as it's follow-ups, it has without a doubt many qualitys and surely is worth a listen. Welcome To The Other Side sounds pretty much like any Rage album when it comes to the vocals, they're very unique. A strong german accent and the almost digitized-sounding vocals is what makes it so unique (not a very good description, but you'll figure it out once you hear it). The instrumental work also sounds pretty much like before, even if the whole line-up (except from Peavy, the vocalist) had to be replaced as the rest left to make a pop called "Sub7even", weird but true. The guitar-work is pretty good, the bass is better than before and so is the drumming. The production is also rock-solid.

Welcome To The Other Side has, believe it or not, a total of 17 songs! If you remove some rather uninteresting intros and interludes, you get 14, but still, it's a lot of songs, so not every song can be great. "The Mirror In Your Eyes" is the first great song we encounter on this album. A typical Rage-track with a great, singalong chorus. "Welcome To The Other Side" is also a great track. It starts off heavy with guitars blasting into your ears, then it changes into a small acoustic part and then it changes into the heavy part again. Confused yet? Typical Rage, you'll get used to it. Another good track is "Riders On The Moonlight", once again, typical Rage. Also, it's worth to be mentioned that track 4 - 7 is called "Tribute to Dishonour", wether or not this is supposed to count as one song, I'm kinda unsure of.

Despite it's length and number of songs, I'm unable to find anything really bad on this album except from it's useless interludes. It has a few standouts as mentioned above. An album worth checking out if you like Power Metal.

Rating: 7/10