Rage - The Missing Link (1993)^{Release ID: 6378}

Rage are one of the longest running and most consistent German Metal bands out there. 1993 was only 10 years into their career, but The Missing Link was already Rage’s 7th(!) album, and they continued this trend of releasing an album at least every other year for many decades. Amazingly almost all of them are great, but 1993’s “The Missing Link” may be where they settled on a trademark sound of simple but effective Power Metal with generous Heavy, Speed, and Thrash influences.

If you know Rage’s sound, there’s not much to say about this, but it’s quite simply aggressive Power Metal that sacrifices some of genre’s usual melodicism and catchiness for classic Metal riffage. Lost in the Ice flirts with Symphonic elements, which would become more prominent on later albums. This album is incredibly consistent across its 12 tracks, and the thing about Rage is while they write very few poor songs, they similarly write just as few masterpieces. Instead, they crank out a vast number of great tracks with solid songwriting and riffs. The Missing Link is right around their peak era, so you can expect every song here to be very good; just don’t expect any mind-blowing numbers.

The bonus track cover of “Beyond the Pale” is absolutely amazing, one of those few masterpieces and it didn’t even make the album!