RAGE guitarist Victor Smolski has checked in with the following recap of the band's recent European tour for their new album, Carved in Stone:Ö

"Hey all together!

Finally home! Six weeks touring through Europe was pretty hard, but as well pretty cool! First of all I'd like to thank my band-buddies Peavy and Andrè for these many good shows, together we set on a real good setlist and rocked the stages! Really refreshing and different to all Rage moods so far was the guest appearance of Jen Majura - these two songs have become the most pictured performances during the whole tour. Also I would like to thank Schrörg, our friend and booker from Dragon Productions, who was always there to find solutions for any problems which the tour brought up. Furthermore, my thanks go to our Rage crew: Charly at the sound, Jürgen at the lights and Sascha on stage. These guys have been working for three bands almost through out the whole tour, what at the end seemed to be little too much - this fault we'll never do again.

The perfect support from our endorsement companies ENGL (great sound of the new Invader 150), Yamaha, Cordial Cables and Thomastik-Infeld Strings (since I'm playing the Powerbright strings, I never broke any string again) helped us a lot to survive this tour having a great sound without being faced to any equipment problems.

The very best thing on this tour has been once again our fans, who have supported us with their screaming and shouting song after song and show after show. Thanx! Their energy makes us forget about our tiredness and keeps us kicking asses daily - for me it is sometimes quite funny to see how people are able to sing along note for note even my guitarsoli. On the other hand it can be very frustrating to see some dudes sleeping on our monitor-system, completely drunk or, just like it was in Fulda, after the second song hearing somebody shouting at Peavy 'Take off your panties!' (!?) As well not very nice it was to hear dumb racist comments about our Austrian guest band during our stay in Bad Salzungen, as well as it turned out to be not funny that our beer has been stolen from our backstage. Dear all promoters, I'd like you to understand what musicians and especially the crew are physically going through during a tour, so at least there should be showers in a club! What I've never expected in middle Europe, as for example Germany, that there couldn't be found any hot water in some clubs!? (Hello!? Did the civilisation leave you behind???).

Six weeks in a nightliner together with 18 people is already hard enough, but we had great luck with our support bands: all musicians from EDENBRIDGE, FREAKOZAKS, DEZPERADOZ and 7th AVENUE have been very cool and nice guys! Thanks to our friend and webmaster Joe Derschka, who always hurried up with uploading the tour diary files and took care about all the business at home. Here I'd like to say sorry to all fans, who have not been able to buy the suitable sizes or items (such as the Tank Top) etc. at our merchandise stand, but unfortunately our merchandise company Print Palace had problems with the delivery. I hope not all of you became deaf (lol) and we'll see each other on some of the next Rage-concerts again."

Best regards,

Your Victor