Lingua Mortis Orchestra (aka Rage) - LMO

I'm confused about this album. The guys in Rage are calling this a side-project, though it's a continuation of the previous Lingua Mortis Orchestra trilogy of albums, which were released under the Rage moniker. So why this is now being called Lingua Mortis Orchestra featuring Rage is beyond me.

Quote :

On Friday, August 2, LINGUA MORTIS ORCHESTRA will release its new album titled "LMO". The three RAGE musicians — Victor Smolski (guitar), Peavy Wagner (vocals and bass) and André Hilgers (drums) — worked at full stretch to finish their opulent orchestral project that can be considered a continuation of 1996's "Lingua Mortis" album, back then a true piece of pioneering work.

A new trailer for "LMO" can be seen below.

The entire album was composed by Victor Smolski, who cooperated with two orchestras from Spain and Russia, enlarging the number of this mammoth project's participants to more than 100. Together with longtime co-producer Charlie Bauerfeind (BLIND GUARDIAN, HAMMERFALL), Victor Smolski produced and mixed the record in Twilight Hall Studio in Krefeld, Germany. The final mastering will be done within the next days.

"LMO" follows an exciting concept on the burning of witches in Gelnhausen in 1599, written by vocalist Peavy Wagner and based on a true story. Apart from the three RAGE musicians, two female vocalists belong to LINGUA MORTIS ORCHESTRA's regular cast: Jeannette Marchewka and soprano singer Dana Harnge. Guest vocals were contributed by Henning Basse (ex-METALLIUM), among others.

"LMO" track listing:

01. Cleansed By Fire
a) Convert The Pagans Pt. 1
b) The Inquisition (instrumental)
c) Convert The Pagans Pt. 2
02. Scapegoat
03. The Devil's Bride
04. Lament
05. Oremus (instrumental)
06. Witches' Judge
07. Eye For An Eye
08. Afterglow

The cover artwork was created by Felipe Machado Franco who's also been responsible for the latest RAGE artwork, "21". The band photos were shot by Pia Kintrup.

This past Saturday, May 4, a rough mix of "LMO" was presented to a group of international journalists. Journalist Martin Stark of Germany's Rock It magazine describes the record as an "opulent metal opera, more orchestral than anything else, partly heavier than RAGE and melodic beyond my wildest dreams from end to end." Guitar editor Nico Ernst states: "Never before has the combination of band and orchestra worked that well." Metal.de writer Florian Schörg takes the thought further and judges: "The perfect symbiosis of two worlds sparkles with both fantastic melodies and heaviness. The gigantic spectrum of emotions can be considered the cream topping on this extraordinarily delicious sound cocktail."

Unless you understand German, most of that second clip is worthless to you. For clips of new music, watch up through 1:36, then skip ahead and watch 9:37–10:34. The rest is just talk in German.

Anyway, I loved the first three albums, and this one sounds really good. Looking forward to it, whatever the band name.

Yeah, the name makes no difference. This should be great.

I liked the trilogy as well. I'll be getting this as some point.

Every metal fan should be at least *some* kind of Rage fan with all the records they've put out over time, the style evolution..

I think what this is, is they don't really want to do blended kind of albums anymore where some songs are with the full symphony and others not... so "Rage" will probably be just the meat-and-potatoes slightly proggy power thrash..... and then LMO will be all the symphonic craziness.

I hope this is good, the concept is slightly cheesy, but......

They were PHENOMENAL on the 70k cruise this last year! Amazing!!!

Full song.



Solid.

Yea this will be good.

Eyesore wrote:

Full song.



Solid.

I really like that!

I love what I heard off this so far.

One more to my already long list of albums to get for this year!

Kinda stock, honestly.....and I think more stuff about the Inquisition is about as fresh as hearing about dungeons.

I hope the next Rage album takes some more effort....they have over a dozen, I don't expect it to be on every level ever at this point... this here is pretty bland to me though.

I still haven't picked this one up.

Thinking about it though.

How do people here rate this?

I didn't get any comments, so being on a Rage kick, I just ordered two other older albums I've been missing out on.

Reflections of a Shadow and Welcome to the Other Side. Second hand, Amazon. The latter from Japan, the former from UK.

Now I'm only missing the first two (+ this last one, if it even counts?!)

They are all good. Fantastic band. Looking forward to their next one.

rajah wrote:

They are all good. Fantastic band. Looking forward to their next one.

Any thoughts on the two I did end up buying?

I think you will enjoy both of them. Welcome to the Other Side is one of my favorites.

Overall I prefer latter day Rage(more melodic) over their early stuff(more thrash).

All Rage is excellent  :-)

And beside LMO we have now also Refuge with the classic lineup. I saw refuge 2 weeks ago live and they were great. I always liked the playing of Manni and Christos played two sets at this night. One with his other band Tri State Corner and the Refuge set.

By the way, if you are still looking for the albums of that classic Rage lineup, they release them now as a nice box set.



http://www.refuge-band.de/

16 months later and I finally picked this up. I have to say I'm a little disappointed. The music is almost like leftover Smolski riffs and melodies, with some orchestration to carry it.

I've played it twice now. I hope it grows at least a little in time. It's certainly done with class, and there's that inherent standard that comes with the Rage logo (albeit it a small logo on the bottom of the cover in this instance), and it's still better than 99% of the music out there today.

Anyway I got it real cheap (new) and the package is nice with two re-recorded Rage tracks and a live DVD. Worth what I paid for it definifely.

If I somehow tried to rank this with proper Rage albums, this would be second to last, only ahead of the original Lingua Mortis CD.

Hmmm, I had actually forgotten about this. I'll still get it at some point but it's way down on the priority list.