When we comment bands such as Rage, we should always have in mind their persistence and undying productivity, which lead them in everything they did through the years. The German can be proud of their history and with their albums, many concerts and popularity, which many didn’t succeed to have. The changes became their companion and this was shown well in the last ten years. In the last one Mike Terrana was thrown out from the band with a bang. This fact shocked many, but when the reasons for his leaving were properly explained by the only original member left in the band, Peavy Wagner, things became clearer. And while many are still wondering how the drummer can be so stupid to spit at his colleague, Rage found a wonderful substitute. The new guy, Andre Hilgers (Axxis, Silent Force), is a surprisingly effective choice - a statement which can be proved by listening to the new full-length infant “Carved in Stone”. The dramatic situations with the relations between the members did not reflect on Peavy and his helpers, because they’ve created one of their most wonderful efforts to date. The album is an original return to the roots of the band - a wink to the period of their development when they were gaining experience and fans, when they were young, wild and unforged. In “Carved in Stone” the orchestrations are reduced to the sanitary minimum (only in the final song “Lord of the Flies”), and all the rest is subordinate to a single theme - traditional heavy metal. The vocals of Wagner lead us from song to song through dramatic contemporary stories that seriously disturb the frontman. His devoted fellow-traveller Victor Smolski keeps both the melodic rhythm and the tangled guitar solos. “Carved in Stone” is a great album - more than I’ve expected from Rage after “Speak of the Dead”(2006).