RAGE After doing interviews with RUNNING WILD, U.D.O.,HELLOWEEN, BLIND GUARDIAN and GRAVE DIGGER, I wanted very bad to do also with RAGE which with the above mentioned bands belong to the leaders of POWER METAL music. When they released their new very good albu "Soundchaser" I grab the opportunity and proudly I present you the answers that Peavy, gave me...  1. FIRST OF ALL IF I ASKED YOU TO GIVE A TITLE TO YOUR CAREER AND POINT OUT WHICH ACCORDING TO YOU ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT MOMENTS OF THE BAND'S LIFE, WHAT WOULD YOU TELL ME? There were some years (albums) that made an important step for the band, like ‘88 with Perfect man, we acclaimed success outside of Germany or ‘92/93 (Trapped/Mising link) that were our big breakthrough in Japan. Later the orchestrated albums (Lingua mortis/13) were also important widening our range in the audience and also our Unity album last year was the step to finally establish our actual band... 2. YOUR PREVIOUS BAND'S NAME WAS AVENGER AND NOW YOU HAVE RAGE. BOTH ARE VERY POWERFUL AND VERY AGGRESSIVE WORDS. DO YOU STILL FEEL FRUSTRATED AND ANGRY OR IS IT NOW JUST AN ORDINARY BAND NAME?  Yeah, sometimes I?m an angry man... 3. RAGE WITH UNITY TRIED TO MAKE A COMEBACK TO THEIR FIRST PERIOD WHILST ADDING NEW ELEMENTS. WHAT SHOULD WE EXPECT FROM YOUR NEW ALBUM? We go further on this direction, Soundchaser has even stronger songs and more variety. 4. WHEN THE OLD RAGE MEMBERS LEFT, DID YOU EVER THINK OF QUITTING? HOW EASY WAS IT FOR YOU TO ADJUST WITH THE NEW MEMBERS? I never thought of Quitting and I found Mike & Victor within the following two weeks. We are professionals, you know... 5.DURING YOUR LONG PERIOD OF EXISTENCE RAGE REVEALED 2 FACES, THE POWER/SPEED ONE AND THE MORE CLASSICAL/SYMPHONIC. WHICH DO YOU THINK REPRESENTS BETTER RAGE OF THIS ERA? Rage was always a power metal band with a unique way of songwriting and always technical on a high level. The period where we experimented with an Orchestra was never a style change, see it as an addition to the regular band sound. Today we focus more on the metal side, but actually the technical quality has risen a lot, we never played better before... 6. IS IT PERHAPS THE FACT THAT YOU ARE STILL IN A SEARCH OF YOUR SOUND THAT YOU NAMED THE NEW ALBUM SOUNDCHASER? DO YOU STILL CHASE YOUR SOUND OR HAVE YOU FOUND WHAT REPRESENTS YOU BETTER? We found our sound long time ago, but that doesn 't stop us from writing NEW songs (no self copies) that can contain unheard elements. We 're creative musicians that love creating new music, we don't just do a job... 7. CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT THE TOPICS THAT YOUR LYRICS DEAL WITH? THE MOST USUAL THING IS FOR THE BANDS FIRST TO COMPOSE THE MUSIC AND THEN WRITE THE LYRICS. IS THIS WHAT YOU DO OR HAS IT HAPPENED TO WRITE SOME LYRICS AND THEN GET INSPIRATION FOR THE SOUND THAT WOULD ACCOMPANY THEM? IF YES, WHICH SONG? We always have the music first, but the writing of Lyrics comes directly with the melodies. As soon as I have a melody in my head I look for a line of words for it, so you could say it happens the same time. Only for Victor’s songs of course I have to write the words later. Usually I like to write about topics dealing with the Afterlife, spiritual things or social topics. For Soundchaser I wrote a Science fiction concept story about the origins of our Cover Biomechanoid creature, the “Soundchaser”, that's his name... 8. SURELY THE USE OF CLASSICAL ORCHESTRA IN HEAVY METAL WAS SOMETHING UNIQUE AND VERY ORIGINAL FOR THE SCENE! IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THIS PIONEERING THING YOU ACCOMPLISHED HAS FILLED YOU WITH ANXIETY AND MAKES YOU THINK THAT YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO PRESENT SOMETHING DIFFERENT? DOES THIS FEELING WORK AGAINST THE CREATIVITY? No. Having worked with an Orchestra fills me with pride, especially as we were the first in the metal scene. I?m never anxious about expectations of the audience, that makes no sense, as you never can make it right for everyone. The only importance is to make it right for yourself, making experiments like the orchestra work for example is perfect fuel for the creativity, it opens new doors for your horizon, the best that can happen to an artist. If you did your best and your heartblood is in the music, then people can accomplish that and follow you. If you just play safe and do the same song over and over it just gets boring.  9. QUITE MANY YEARS PASSED SINCE WE LAST SAW YOU HERE IN GREECE (i meant Thessaloniki, my hometown) WITH THE OLD LINE UP OF COURSE. IS IT POSSIBLE TO SEE YOU FOR A LIVE SHOW NOW? We played in Athens last march. Maybe we can play next spring, I hope. 10. YOUR FIRST OFFICIAL RELEASE WAS WITH A BAND UNDER THE NAME AVENGER. WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER FROM THOSE YEARS? YOUR LYRICS BACK THEN HAD AN EVIL/SATANIC THEMATOLOGY. DO YOU REGRET WRITING SOME OF THEM? DO YOU STILL LIKE THE AVENGER SONGS? I still like the Avenger stuff, this was the beginning of my musical path. I have good memories of those years, it was pretty exciting then... the lyrics were just a joke, we made fun of this wannabe evil & mean stuff, we were not aware that people would take this crap serious (how can one anyway?), obviously some people are very naive. 11. NOW LET'S GO BACK TO THE NEW ALBUM. COULD YOU TELL US A FEW GENERAL THINGS ABOUT IT? WHERE WAS IT RECORDED, WHO WAS THE PRODUCER, HOW LONG DID THE RECORDING SESSIONS TAKE? ARE YOU SATISFIED BY THE FINAL RESULT? IF YOU HAD THE CHANCE TO CHANGE SOMETHING NOW WHAT WOULD IT BE? I love our new album, I don't wanna change anything, I love each and every song, something that I had very rarely. It was recorded in Germany & Spain , Producer was Charlie Bauerfeind, like on Unity, we recorded from April till middle June this year. 12.DO YOU HAVE ANY THOUGHTS ON DOING A VIDEO CLIP FOR "SOUNDCHASER"? IF YES, WHICH SONG WOULD YOU SELECT AND WHY? DO YOU IMAGINE HOW THIS VIDEO CLIP WOULD LOOK LIKE? We plan to record some live shows for a DVD /Live CD coming out next year to the 20th Anniversary. We want to use one of the new songs for a live clip then, unfortunately we won?t have it now for the release of  Soundchaser. We didn?t decide what song. Video clips are expensive and unfortunately nearly no TV station plays metal clips, so it makes no sense to produce a clip for every album. We still use our last clip for Down/Unity for promotion... 13. WHICH ARE THE THINGS THAT FILL YOU WITH RAGE NOWADAYS? DO YOU THINK THAT DAY AFTER DAY WE BECOME MORE AND MORE CONFORMISTS AND LOSE THE WILL TO FIGHT FOR OUR DREAMS? IS IT AFTER ALL LIFE A MARCH TOWARDS DEFEAT AND BETRAYAL OF OUR PAST SELF? Yes, nowadays societies suck! We spend shitloads of money for weapons to kill ourselves and no money there for feeding the hunger and curing the diseases of the people. The resources of the world are not shared right. Some greedy assholes grab it all and give a shit about the world’s future. We?re at a point where a new paradigma should begin, but it seems that the backwards focused energies are working hard against the flow of evolution... 14. SO MANY YEARS WITH RAGE...WHICH DREAMS HAVE YOU ACHIEVED TO MAKE TRUE AND WHICH DO YOU STILL WANT TO? I 'm grateful I had the chance to do that all and I hope I get the chance to go on doing it... 15. LATELY BANDS RELEASE DVDS. DO YOU HAVE ANY PLANS FOR RELEASING ONE WITH YOUR NEW LINEUP? IF YES, WHEN DO YOU PLAN TO DO THAT? See answer 12. 16. IN WHICH MOVIE SOUNDTRACK WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE TAKEN PART OR HAVE COMPOSED? We were in the movie Soundtrack of the most successful German Movie ever, with Straight to hell. The movie was the Wild West parody “The shoe of Manitou” and over 15 million people have seen it... 17. THANK YOU! HAVE I FORGOTTEN TO ASK YOU ANYTHING AND YOU'D LIKE TO MENTION? Cheers,Peavy. Nikos "William_Kidd" Parastatidis