Interview with the guitarist Victor Smolski from RAGE
It's always very exciting to meet and do the interviews with the musicians, who was your heroes since your childhood. All these people seemed to be so far away and so out of reach. And when you're dialling the phone number to talk to one of them you always have the whole bunch of different feelings: excitement, fear, happiness, even panic - what if you screw-up?! Your idol will think that you're an idiot! Damn… Interviewing people for more than seven years now, I found out that main part of the musicians are very liberal and basically, same human beings as ourselves. But I still have the same fear and panic, when somebody answers the phone: "Hello?". Somehow I always missed that moment when I say "Hello" back. I guess, if I concentrated and tried to realise, what's going on inside of me, I could've write the entire book about that short second…

MAX: Hello, may I speak to Mr. Smolski?

VICTOR: Yeah, that's me.

M: Hi, Victor! Thanks for finding time to do this interview. Are you ready to answer a few questions?

V: Yeah, sure! Go for it!

M: The first question is: what's going on with RAGE now and how is the last album?

V: We just finished the European tour and now I started composing the new songs. We changed the record company, we changed the management and that's the reason why we want to make a new CD straight away. I think we'll go in October - November in the studio and the new album will be released in the beginning of the next year.

M: You changed the record company, so who will release the RAGE albums now?

V: We haven't decide yet. We have some options and we think about it at the moment. But definitely not GUN and not BMG.

M: How is the last album, "Welcome To The Other Side"? How's sales and how's the response from people?

V: The response is pretty good. It's difficult to make everyone happy. Some people prefer that "progressive" sound that we had on some of our last CDs. Now we have less keyboards, less orchestra, so RAGE is more Metal now. And I think we will carry on in the same way, back to our Metal roots.

M: "Ghosts" was more symphonic and "Welcome To The Other Side" is more straight Heavy Metal. What was the reason for this changes?

V: We spent two years on tour together and we could see that people have had enough of these big shows and just want some rock'n'roll - three guys on stage and live sound, not all these orchestra and play-backs and keyboards. I mean, "Ghosts" was a very good album, great music, great songs. But there was too much keyboards and maybe too "poppy".

M: About your solo CD, "The Heretic". Are you planning to do some more solo works?

V: You see, this CD was very special for me. It's not a "normal" solo-work. I had before a solo album, "Destiny", and it was just a guitar music. "The Heretic" is some special kind of music. It's more like movie soundtrack. I composed it for a very long time, the CD took me almost three years. I'm not sure if the next time I'll make something like this. I've already started to do some recordings for my new solo CD, I think it will be out the next Summer. It will be just a guitar music with lots of guest musicians - from America, Russia, Germany.

M: Are you planning to do any vocal parts on your next solo CD?

V: No, it will be only instrumental.

M: If you don't mind, a little bit of history. You're coming from the family of a classical composer. How did you come to Heavy Metal?

V: I started to listen to Rock because of my brother. He's also a professional musician and he have a very good collection of all that Rock LPs. I listened to them and I liked it. At the age of 10-11 I went to jazz college and started playing guitar. I like Rock because it has a great emotions, great energy. I mean, I like to play all kind of music. I play jazz and fusion, and for me it's very interesting to try to combine different styles and create something new.

M: Who's your favourite musicians? Who inspires you?

V: I have many favourite guitar players and composers. I like Frank Zappa, John Lang, Steve Vay… There's some very good songs from DREAM THEATER and SPOOKS BEARD. But my favourite composer and musician is my father. I learned very much from him.

M: Do you listen to classical music a lot?

V: Yes. I think, most of my free time I listen to the classical music.

M: I heard your work with the symphonic orchestra. It was very interesting.

V: Yes, my father and me, we composed together this "Symphony Number 9". It was especially written for electric guitar and orchestra. It was very interesting for me, because it wasn't that Malmsteen style and also not Deep Purple or Metallica. It was very difficult avant-garde classic and heavy guitar. You see, orchestra have completely different feeling to play with. When you're playing with a band, it's always straight, you have your special groove and in orchestra the conductor makes groove. This music has much more feeling. When we did the tour with orchestra, I started to collect an ideas for "The Heretic".

M: Did you listen to RAGE before you joined the band?

V: Yes, I listened to RAGE. From the guitar side I think it was much more interesting when Manny (Schmidt) was in the band. These Greek guys (Chris and Spiros Eftimiadis) wasn't as good as Manny. But RAGE always was very interesting for me.

M: What was the story behind you joining RAGE?

V: My band MIND ODYSSEY was also on GUN Records and the RAGE manager knew me very well. And when Peavey had some trouble in studio he asked me to do some studio work with RAGE. We met with Peavey in studio, had a jam… I guess I was lucky (laughing). It's very easy to work with Peavey and the whole feeling in RAGE - I like it! It's very good.

M: Maybe a bit difficult question: what's you favourite RAGE song?

V: (Sigh) Oooh…. (laughing). It is very difficult, because every song you compose is like your child. You can't say "I like this child more than the other". Some songs, like for example "Straight To Hell", are very special. It's not a normal songs, it's more like an experiment. Some songs like "One More Time" has a great memories behind them - how we composed them, how we recorded them, tried a different versions, different arrangements… It was very interesting…

M: A lot of songs before was written by Peavey Wagner. Do you compose together now or is it mostly his work to do?

V: The last CD was mostly 50/50. For me it's very easy, I compose whenever I want to and how much I want, so we decide now all together which song will make it on a CD. Mike (Terrana, the drummer) also can compose. Some songs for the new album might as well come from Mike. Peavey and I already have some songs for the new CD.

M: What do you think about the modern Metal stage?

V: This kind of music comes from America now. Heavy Metal is not very popular now and all that LIMP BIZKIT music is everywhere. I'm not interested in playing this kind of music, because it's mixed with RAP… I don't know, it's not my thing. But the traditional Metal is way more professional now than it was in '80s. The problem that I see is that there's very many Progressive bands, who has a great techniques, but the songs are not so good (giggles). Some people use too much techniques and forgot what the music is about - the melody!

M: What's about the young Power Metal bands? There's lots of them now, HAMMERFALL, SONATA ARCTICA…

V: Yeah, that's OK. These bands help the Heavy Metal business. They attract more fans to this kind of music. That's OK. I'm not a big fan of HAMMERFALL, but some of the young bands are really, really good.

M: I heard you have a very interesting hobby - car racing. Could you tell us some more about it?

V: Yeah, I have a very crazy hobby. There's only one thing that can make me forget about everything - it's rally and all kind of car racing. I drive for 6 years now and it's a lot of fun! Big risk though. A couple of months ago a guy got killed on track. There was something wrong with his car, he crashed and died. But at the same time it's easier to die on the motorway here in Germany. People drive like crazy - 180 - 200 km/h… So the racing is not that dangerous from this point of view (giggles).

M: If you had to choose to do either music or racing, what would you choose?

V: Music! Definitely music! (laughs) Racing is a great hobby, but it's only hobby.

M: And probably about the plans for the nearest future for you and for RAGE.

V: Now I'm making some recordings for my solo CD, in October - November we go in studio with RAGE, in the beginning of the next year we plan to release the CD and then we'll go on tour. Maybe April - May. I hope it's gonna be a big tour, because with the new management we have way more possibilities to ravel.

M: Thanks for you interview, hope that when the CD will be released I could come back to you and talk about it once more.

V: Yeah, welcome!

Max Thrasher
HOUSE OF NOIZZ (www.oocities.org/houseofnoizz)
Exclusively for PENNY DREADFUL (www.pennydreadful.de)