RAGE: Limited-Edition Digibook Version Of 'Strings To A Web' Detailed

Veteran German metallers RAGE will release their new album, "Strings To A Web", on February 5, 2010 via Nuclear Blast Records. The CD was recorded at Twilight Hall Studio and was produced by Charlie Bauerfeind (BLIND GUARDIAN, HAMMERFALL). The cover artwork was created by Thomas Ewerhard (AVANTASIA, THERION),and it shows the soundchaser as a spider, caught in a web.

The limited-edition digibook version of "Strings To A Web" will include a high-quality DVD including 15 live clips. The main portion of the DVD will consist of the "best-of" show RAGE played at the Wacken Open Air festival in 2009, including guest appearances by Hansi Kürsch (BLIND GUARDIAN),Schmier (DESTRUCTION) and Jen Majura (BLACK THUNDER LADIES).

The track listing is as follows:

01. Carved In Stone
02. Higher Than The Sky
03. Set This World On Fire (featuring Hansi Kürsch)
04. All I Want (featuring Hansi Kürsch)
05. Invisible Horizons (featuring Hansi Kürsch)
06. Lord Of The Flies (featuring Jen Majura)
07. From The Cradle To The Grave (featuring Jen Majura)
08. Prayers Of Steel (featuring Schmier)
09. Suicide (featuring Schmier)
10. Down (featuring Schmier)
11. Soundchaser

In addition there will be four more live clips:

12. Set This World On Fire (Live at the "Masters of Rock 2009")
13. All I Want (Live at the "Masters of Rock 2009")
14. Carved In Stone (Live in Sofia 2009)
15. Never Give Up (Rage Race Special)

"I am really proud of the album, we hardly ever sounded more inspired and it is an absolute highlight in our career," says bassist/vocalist Peavy Wagner. Drummer André Hilgers adds, "This albums show all the different faces and characters and I call it the most enormous and multifarious record I ever recorded."

"Strings To A Web" includes melodic and anthemic tracks such as "Into The Light" and "The Beggar's Last Dime", as well as powerful thrashers like "Purified" and "Tomorrow Never Comes". But the heart of the record comes in the shape of the 16-minute masterpiece "Empty Hollow", a progressive fairytale that unites everything RAGE is about.

"You can compare 'Empty Hollow' to our 'Lingua Mortis Suite' from the 'Speak Of The Dead' record," says guitarist Victor Smolski. "This song was recorded with an orchestra and is divided into five parts.

"As a band we have discovered a lot of new possibilities and elements, even in Peavy's vocals, my way of playing guitar or the arrangements in André's drumming."

Dayal Patterson of the English magazine Metal Hammer decribed the record as an "intense, frantic and technical assault tempered by clean sung choruses and harmonies!" His spanish collegue Sergi Ramos of Metal Hammer stated, "Everything you love about today's RAGE sound plus a dose of old-school thrown in for good measure."