Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Voice
2. We Stand Alone
3. Rage In Eden
4. I Remember (Death In The Afternoon)
5. Thin Wall
6. Stranger Within
7. Accent On Youth
8. Ascent
9. Your Name (Has Slipped My Mind)

Disc 2:

1. I Never Wanted To Begin
2. Paths And Angles
3. I Never Wanted To Begin
4. Private Lives
5. All Stood Still
6. I Remember (Death In The Afternoon)
7. Stranger Within
8. Rage In Eden
9. Accent On Youth
10. Ascent
11. Your Name (Has Slipped My Mind Again)
12. Stranger Within
13. Thin Wall

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5884 in Music
• Released on: 2008-09-29
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Original recording remastered, Extra tracks
• Dimensions: .27 pounds

Customer Reviews

Trouble in paradise? Not a bit of it!
What can I say about an album I still cherish?

Ultravox were faced with a real mountain to climb after Vienna went to number two in the UK in February 1981. The pressure was on to come up with something equally memorable and innovative and yet time was short: both Billy Currie and Midge Ure were still involved with Visage so Rage In Eden came together slowly - over three months - at the late Conny Plank's rural studio in Germany. The recording wasn't without its setbacks, the least of all being drummer Warren Cann breaking his arm in a car crash!

My memories abound with this album: buying The Thin Wall 12" in a Blackpool record shop and waiting a week to hear it on my stereo, seeing the band live at Crystal Palace Bowl where they played The Thin Wall for the first time and then buying the album on the day of release before seeing them play a blinder at Hammersmith that October, just weeks after its release.

Vienna is probably their greatest album but Rage runs it a close second.
There are no weak songs here although the media at the time were united in
their ridicule. Kicking-off with the sparky and contrasting The Voice and We Stand Alone before the atmospheric title track and possibly the album's highlight, I Remember (Death In The Afternoon), a track which contained everything that Ultravox had achieved to that point in an accessible, uptempo song-based format.

It's not just about Monroe but also hearing about the deaths of Kennedy, Dean, Lennon and several others; it's more roundabout than specifically about certain dead celebs. That it borrows its title from Hemingway's sublime work is also part of the atmos they were trying to create here and the image involved (based on the fashion of the 1940s, Evelyn Waugh etc).

The second side is a different creature; the shade to the first side's light if you like. Stranger Within is an intense, challenging track, focussing as it does on personal paranoia, Ure's voice in the middle break being both vulnerable, intimate and then full of relief when he delivers the final line. It's quite something, even now. The final three songs are a linked trilogy, detailing a generic teenage journey. To say this chimed with me aged 15 at the time is somewhat of an understatement. Read the lyrics and you'll understand.

The b-sides and live stuff complete a fully-rounded re-issued package that's well worth having.

The return of the Rage face
The long-awaited remaster of Rage in Eden has not disappointed me - the remastered album's sound is clear and well-balanced. The restoration of the original "Face" artwork is particularly exciting for a long-time ultravox fan and looks fantastic :-)

Utterly preposterous, utterly brilliant
It would be easy to put my liking for Ultravox's music down to the dual follies of youth and the 1980s. Sadly, that's not the case. I still love this stuff. Anyone under 30 probably won't understand how the words "They shuffle with a bovine grace and glide in syncopation" sung by a Scottish man with pointy sideburns over a galloping sequenced bassline accompanied by outrageous screeching guitars played by men resembling geography teachers can be an exciting musical experience. All I can say is, "You weren't there!".

(Incidentally, I would have given this album 5 stars, except that I do feel "Your Name has Slipped my Mind Again" and "Stranger Within" drag it down a bit.)