Rage is a very special band in my heart, and one of my top 10 bands. Strangely I couldn't dig them until I first listened to End Of All Days, and then later on I fell in love with the perfect album XIII and also the Lingua Mortis release. Since then I've attended all live shows I could, seen them in Wacken, and I dug almost the entire discography back to the beginning of the band.

This best of covers all the songs under the G.U.N label. The selection is quite good, but one thing I have trouble stomaching, is that the best of starts with a song from the last album, and by far not the best one. Okay Straight To Hell is a fairly good song with an incredible bridge, but a lousy chorus if you ask me. Anyway, I would have never started with that song, that's for sure, especially with the incredible list of killer songs that Rage dispose in their huge discography. Fortunately the second song, Days Of December, puts back everything in place :), and would have been a better choice to start the disc, but I would personally have seen Black In Mind or End Of All Days (my favorite Rage song), that last one shamelessly not appearing in the track selection (why ???). But I believe that Rage would need a double CD to make an efficient Best Of, cause almost all their songs are killing, so it's very difficult to chose from them. Take the XIII album, or Black In Mind and even End Of All Days, all these album are approaching perfection, so it's difficult to chose tracks from them without leaving jewels songs behind... really difficult. The song selection is a good one, you'll get Back In Time (I remember when Rage played that song for the first time in Wacken 99, a few months before the Ghost album went out...), Alive But Dead, Deep In The Blackest Hole, The Mirror In Your Eyes, Black In Mind, Higher Than The Sky, Spiritual Awakening, The Crawling Chaos, From The Cradle To The Grave and a 15 minutes Medley from the Lingua Mortis album. The album also contains two bonus tracks, and they're really good songs, that will please the fans I have no doubts. But I still have difficulties to understand why some excellent songs have been left behind... like I said it would have been better to make a double CD to represent Rage on a best of release.

A very good best of, with 2 new songs, Six Feet Under Ground is a fairly good one and Just Another Wasted Day will make a nice addition to the excellent and almost infinite long list of killer songs from this excellent, underrated band that Rage is. These giants of metal never had the international success they deserved, although they could be one of the biggest of the metal scene if you ask me. For all Rage fans, you can blindly buy this CD, and for the others, if you ever wanted to discover this fabulous band, I think that a best of is probably the best way for you to discover them ! Looking forward to see Rage on tour again (they simply rule !) and also to get a new album (please make it soon) which I hope will be more heavier than the last 2 ones !