![]() Peavy delivers an overall great vocal performance (though not without a few hiccups here and there), but Terrana brings creative and flashy drumming throughout the record and what can we say about Smolski's flashy rhythm guitar tracks full of twists and turns and his tastefully virtuosic lead playing as seen on interlude "Lunatic" among others. One thing that is undeniable about this record is how much of a virtuoso each members are on their instruments. Songs like "Point of No Return", "Leave It All Behind" and the title track show the band slowing down with songs that don't know if they should be heavy and powerful or moody ballads, worst offender being the quite cheesy "Deep In the Night" which is almost reminiscent of an 80's style hard rock ballad (although it is one of my favorites for this reason, it is objectively not one of the best songs on this record). Past the "Tribute to Dishonour" suite however the band seems to be slowing down a bit. The album starts strong with "Paint the Devil On the Wall" and "The Mirror In Your Eyes" full of great riffing, melodies and hooks, a great showcase of what Rage still has to offer. Unfortunately, as mentioned before there is quite a bit of filler on "Welcome to the Other Side". However there is a lot of variety to be offered on this album: the 4-song suite "Tribute to Dishonour" is a great piece of classically-inspired metal music in the vein of what Rage has previously done on "XIII", heavy pounder "Straight to Hell" (which would become arguably the band's most well-known song) and acoustic ballad "After the End" are among the better songs on the album while proving that Rage is clearly no one-trick-pony. Indeed, "Welcome to the Other Side" is not a short record, clocking in at nearly 65 minutes and featuring 17 songs (2 of which are interludes to be fair) there is a lot to digest here and unsurprisingly for a record of this magnitude, there is a bit of filler that could have been cut off to make "Welcome to the Other Side" a much better record. At first this was kind of a turn off for me as I am a fan of great, clean productions but there is so much to love about this album that it ends up being easy to get over this issue. ![]() The guitars are very bass-heavy and sound nice when by themselves but they don't gel very well with the rest, the bass is nearly inexistent and the vocals are a quite loud compared to the rest. Oh god the production, what happened during mixing? The band itself sounds extremely well rehearsed and tight, but those drum tones are questionable at the very best. It begins with an intro featuring some sort of hospital scene samples with the first showcase of Smolski's guitar wizardry. ![]() "Welcome to the Other Side" is the new trio's first offering, and what an album it is. Enter guitar master Victor Smolski, who ended up joining the band alongside drum virtuoso Mike Terrana after helping Peavy during the recording of "Ghosts", and thus creating in my humble opinion a top-tier metal line-up. According to numerous interviews, internal turmoil led to this decision, Peavy specifically calling then guitarist Spiros Efthimiadis "one of the biggest mistakes of his career", however it would seem the rest of the band left on good terms considering then drummer Chris Efthimiadis would rejoin Peavy in another band decades later. Peavy was working on his then magnum opus "Ghosts" when the entirety of the band quit Rage to form pop-rock band Sub7even. ![]() The story behind Rage's 2001 album "Welcome to the Other Side" actually begins in 1999. DISCLAIMER - The Smolski era of Rage features my favorite albums of all time, however objectivity and honesty are my primary objective with those reviews. ![]()
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