Ultravox’s ‘Rage in Eden’ turns 45 on 11 September
Chrysalis Records released Ultravox’s “Rage in Eden” on 11 September 1981, produced by Conny Plank at his Cologne studio. The album turns 45 this year.
Ultravox released their fifth studio album, “Rage in Eden,” on 11 September 1981 through Chrysalis Records. The British new wave band recorded the nine-track album with producer Conny Plank at his studio near Cologne, West Germany, following the commercial breakthrough of “Vienna” a year earlier. “Rage in Eden” turns 45 this year.
Where the “Vienna” sessions had been rehearsed live before the band entered the studio, Ultravox spent three months making “Rage in Eden,” building songs directly out of studio experiments; the title track grew from a backwards playback of vocals recorded for “I Remember (Death in the Afternoon).” The album runs 45 minutes and 34 seconds across nine tracks: “The Voice,” “We Stand Alone,” “Rage in Eden,” “I Remember (Death in the Afternoon),” “The Thin Wall,” “Stranger Within,” “Accent on Youth,” “The Ascent” and “Your Name (Has Slipped My Mind Again),” with the final three forming a continuous sequence on side two. Warren Cann (drums, electronic percussion, vocals), Chris Cross (bass, synthesizers, vocals), Billy Currie (synthesizers, piano, violin, viola) and Midge Ure (lead vocals, guitars, synthesizers) wrote and performed every song, with the original sleeve designed by Peter Saville Associates. Two singles from the album, “The Thin Wall” and “The Voice,” reached number 14 and number 16 on the UK singles chart, while the album itself peaked at number 4 and was certified Gold by the BPI. “Rage in Eden” streams on Spotify.
About Ultravox
Ultravox formed in London in April 1974 as Tiger Lily, led by Royal College of Art student Dennis Leigh, later known as John Foxx, alongside Chris Allen, later Chris Cross, on bass and Stevie Shears on guitar, joined that year by drummer Warren Cann and violinist Billy Currie. After several name changes the band signed to Island Records in 1976 and settled on Ultravox!, with the exclamation mark a reference to the krautrock band Neu!, while finishing its 1977 debut, “Ultravox!,” produced by Steve Lillywhite and Brian Eno. “Ha! Ha! Ha!” followed later that year, and 1978’s “Systems of Romance,” produced by Conny Plank, brought synthesizers to the front of the band’s sound. Island dropped Ultravox at the end of 1978, and John Foxx left in March 1979 to pursue a solo career.
Midge Ure, previously of Slik and the Rich Kids and a touring member of Thin Lizzy, joined as vocalist, guitarist and keyboardist after collaborating with Billy Currie in the studio project Visage. The reshaped band signed to Chrysalis Records, and “Vienna,” released in July 1980 and again produced by Conny Plank, gave Ultravox its commercial breakthrough: the title single reached number 2 on the UK chart in January 1981. “Rage in Eden” followed on 11 September 1981, again recorded with Plank at his Cologne studio, reaching number 4 in the UK and earning a Gold certification from the BPI. Ultravox then worked with producer George Martin on 1982’s “Quartet,” which reached number 6 in the UK and produced four Top 20 singles, before self-producing 1984’s “Lament,” which included the UK number 3 hit “Dancing with Tears in My Eyes.” That November, Midge Ure co-wrote and produced Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” and Ultravox performed at Live Aid in 1985. Warren Cann left the band in 1986, and “U-Vox,” recorded with Big Country’s Mark Brzezicki on drums, became the final album of the original run before Ultravox split in 1987.
Billy Currie led a new line-up through two further albums, “Revelation” (1993) and “Ingenuity” (1994), before the band dissolved again in 1996. The classic line-up of Cann, Cross, Currie and Ure reformed in 2008 for the “Return to Eden” tour and released the studio album “Brilliant” in May 2012, followed by a run of UK arena dates with Simple Minds that closed with a show at the O2 Arena in November 2013. Bassist Chris Cross died in March 2024, as Side-Line reported at the time. In October 2025, Chrysalis continued the catalogue’s reissue campaign with “The Collection (Deluxe Edition),” gathering the band’s 1980s singles. “Rage in Eden,” the fifth studio album that captured Ultravox at its most exploratory in the Cologne studio, turns 45 this year.
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