Once upon a time, there were three young rockers, that were meant to write Heavy Metal History. Peavy Wagner, Manni Schmidt & Christos Efthimiadis released 5 albums in one of the most successful line ups of their former Band RAGE and set the boundaries for a name that is still successful.
Many young people were influenced by these top seller albums and still today, those songs belong to their most wanted list. After 1994, the three musicians moved on to work in different bands and continued to follow their paths to successful musicianships: Peavy (Rage), Manni (ex-Grave Digger), Christos (Tri State Corner).
After a long period during which they had not much contact, the three guys met again in 2014 and decided to play a secret show in their German hometown Herne under the Name “Tres Hombres”. The show was never promoted, apart from mouth to mouth and Facebook to Facebook PR. As a result, this show became a real insider tip and more than 1200 followers found their way to that happening, at this late summer evening in 2014.
For a start, REFUGE played a couple of festival shows all throughout Europe in summer 2015 that were hugely successful. The audiences’ reactions to the RAGE – songs of 1988 – 1993 performed by the original line – up at that time were truly overwhelming and have exceeded all expectations. So more shows were played in 2016, including three concerts in Japan (Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka), exactly 20 years after they played their last show in this line-up – also in Japan!
Around the same time, some record labels approached the band and offered deals for an album with new original songs. Since the chemistry between Peavy, Christos and Manni was as great as never before, they decided to work on new song material and inked a deal with the Frontiers label.
What started out as a “fun thing” in 2014 has turned into a real band again and their new record “Solitary Men” is like a breath of fresh air for all the Metalheads that have been missing “that” killer sound made up of awesome headbanging songs!
This is the first original album since 25 years of the most successful RAGE line-up to date and it sure will be the debut of a brand new band of old acquaintances.

BAND MEMBERS
Peavy Wagner – bass & vocals
Manni Schmidt – guitars
Christos Efthimiadis – drums