Who doesn’t know Rage? This band has been around for 20 years now; 20 long years of developing their style and sound. Soundchaser is the third album with their current international lineup consisting of Peavy Wagner, Victor Smolski and Mike Terrana and continues along the line of its predecessor Unity. In a nutshell: a healthy dose of thrash metal, a pinch of heavy metal and a dazzling display of technicality.

The album opens with a rather redundant intro but then Rage shows their talent with the splendorous “War Of Worlds”. A very catchy albeit heavy track with some technical guitar interludes; excellent stuff from these metal veterans, that’s for sure. The third track “Great Old Ones” pretty much continues down this line. The songs are compact, powerful and have a tendency to get stuck in your head. Rage deliver some very good semi-ballads on Soundchaser and the first one that comes to mind is the excellent “Secrets In A Weird World” and although Peavy isn’t the best singer around, he nevertheless does a fairly decent job on the melodic parts.

Soundchaser is, just like 1999’s Ghost, a concept album inspired by the stories and theories of horror master H.P. Lovecraft; a nice bonus and although the topic might not really fit the music, it is nevertheless more than interesting.

Leave it to these metal veterans and you know you are going to get quality. If you dig melodic thrash metal and don’t mind the exacerbating display of technicality then I urge you to check out Soundchaser. To the Rage fans I can safely say that it is a very safe buy. The usual stuff: nothing really new but great riffs and good melodies topped by a whipping of catchiness.