Rage
Trapped

THE REVIEW

The girl was a bit tipsy, but perfectly conscious. She was young, but not too much, and that modest, pure, and dazzling little dress didn't suit her very well. She looked on with that conspiratorial manner, capable of turning him into a warm piece of clay in her small expert hands; sinful and seductive eyes among pleasantly tousled locks. She began to touch her narrow waist. Climbing, with compromising and inviting fingers, towards those two proportionate collarbones equidistant and then up, to brush the elegant neck; the torso like a flexible pole in the wind. The dress was still there, but for him it no longer made much of a difference. Her mouth half open in pure daze: bewildered for having lost the last two neurons somewhere under the armchair, in the dusty carpet. Gone forever. Eyelids nailed, and not moving for fear of breaking the spell. She approached letting the straps fall sexily, it wasn't necessary, and...

Now that I should have captured some horny and faded nerd, let me talk to you about “Trapped!“. I will be forgiven by Bartolo for this unnecessary duplicate, but this review was stuck for too long in the depths of my PC and loudly asked me for air.

A couple of burly adults approach the boy. He's no longer a fresh-faced teenager but is still green enough to have some fear seeing those shady figures growing larger. He scrutinizes them with awe and then a hearty pat on the back and a handshake. It's 1992, a series of albums that almost no one had paid attention to, and those two guys were called Accept and Running Wild. Attributable to the power genre, when these weren't yet 5 damned letters to be ashamed of, “Trapped!“ displays all the potential of Peavy Wagner's band. Time has passed: he still had a truckload of hair and didn't seem like he had swallowed a calf that was unsuccessfully trying to escape from his belly. In terms of quality, it's a sort of “Metal Heart”, “Death or Glory”, “Walls of Jericho” and “Land Of The Free”.

I don't deny that Victor Smolski really knows his stuff. Even though on stage he often maintains a somewhat lazy and bothersome attitude, he's far from those hateful fretboard masturbators all speed and little else. But Manni Schmidt. Yes, I always miss him when I listen to Rage and this CD in particular. Riffs like those of “Difference” or magnetic arpeggios like that of “Shame On You” aren't found everywhere, looking absentmindedly at the ground. It's a dirty sound, pleasantly rusty and melodic, that creeps into your ears and doesn't leave easily. Damn, Manni Schmidt. With the tennis racket, as a pimply kid, I imitated him and between him and Wolf Hoffmann, I still preferred his touch.

Be clear, there is hard-hitting in this CD. Some trained ears are needed and Chris Efthimiadis behind the drums has his work cut out for him. Yet it's far from being defined as an extreme work with mere double bass, tight riffs, belches into the microphone, etc. There are fast-paced pieces, and here I could list several pointless names, but with a melodic, seductive, charming style, without needing honeyed choruses and keyboards. It's that just-right compromise between heavy metal and melody with tempo changes and breaks that intrigue the listener. Rage really knew how to break the spine of a song and pick up the thread before the end credits. And here, in the verdancy of a growing compositional vein, each track stands out and hides something: the only glue that voice not at all accommodating or pleasant of Peavy. An index finger that, hypnotically and sinisterly, twists closing and opening.

Many so-called masterpieces of the '80s attributable to the most classic heavy metal genre “Trapped!” looks them in the eye. Together with renowned 5 obese stars albums, it goes to have a drink at the bar every Saturday night. It was seen last week in Hamburg, near the port, with that clown “The Trooper” and that noisy “Reign In Blood” who after all is as good as bread. Success will come eventually, they told him, while completely drunk they shrugged off the dust laughing like crazy. He smiles sourly and knocks back another glass.

I see you pressing the keys and thinking, while the sentence takes a more or less elegant form, something close to a “definitely too hyped and not very objective”. And in this way, maybe without even knowing them, these 50 minutes will once again remain only for the usual few assholes.

And maybe it's not even a bad thing, come to think of it.