RAGE Guitarist's Testicle Explodes On Stage

In a recent interview with Rockdetector.com's David Borgioli-Jones, RAGE maniman Peavy Wagner described exactly what happened to guitarist Victor Smolski earlier this year that caused the band to cancel several European shows. An excerpt from the interview follows:

Rockdetector.com: How is Victor now?

Peavy Wagner: "At first he was really close to death, but he has recovered completely."

Rockdetector.com: He was in hospital for a while, what were the operations for exactly?

Peavy Wagner: "His testicle was broken up you know."

Rockdetector.com: How did that happen?

Peavy Wagner: "It got infected first, I think. He'd already had a breakdown in the studio and an emergency doctor was called and he didn't really check what it was you know, he didn't really get it. The doctor just told him maybe he ate something wrong and he should drink some tea … or something like this [laughs]. For some reason, it got kind of stable you know. It was still infected, but it got kind of stable. It didn't really start hurting too much so he just carried on with this infected testicle. Then we started playing and we had a show in Italy at the metal festival in Bologna. Right during the show the thing burst and all this yellow shit… what do you call it?"

Rockdetector.com: Pus?

Peavy Wagner: "Yeah, it all floated into his belly you know. And of course, this was a very dangerous situation and they had to bring him to the hospital and have an emergency operation."

Rockdetector.com: So he was rocking hard and it broke up?

Peavy Wagner: "Yeah!" [laughs]

Rockdetector.com: RAGE [are about to release] a new live album, "From the Cradle to the Grave"?

Peavy Wagner: "We [are], that’s right. It's coming out on November 15th, I think."

Rockdetector.com: I understand you recorded the album at the famous Bochum Zeche venue?

Peavy Wagner: "Yeah, we recorded this in Bochum, quite near to my home town in the middle west of Germany. And we went there to record it because it was place where I had my very first shows with RAGE 20 years ago. It's a good place to come back to. And also this place is always well known for having a really good audience you know. It's always pretty packed and the people are really good… a good atmosphere there. So I think the show went down pretty good. When you see the DVD, you'll see its really good."

Rockdetector.com: How much of the album is live? Are there overdubs?

Peavy Wagner: "It's pretty much live. Yeah, we remixed everything with Charlie Bauerfeind. He's our previous producer, he produced already the second-to-last album. We had to repair some of the vocal shit you know because there were different microphones on stage and one of the microphones wasn't working properly for some songs and so some vocals lines were missing or were only half. But we recorded four shows on our little tour in January. We recorded all four shows and it was pretty easy to fly over from the other show, some of the lines that were missing there you know. So I would say it's 95%."

The full interview and detailed RAGE biography, discography and gig guide can be found here.