Can't Take Away The Fire

Silver Lining Music released this EP on 14 February 2025 to mark fifty years of the band. Five new songs run from "Black And Blue" to "The Wreckage", and three live recordings follow. The reason there are eight tracks rather than five is commercial rather than artistic. John Gallagher told NYS Music that distributors dislike EPs and have to price them lower, so the band padded the release out with live material. What that produced, almost by accident, is a record on which three different eras of Raven each arrive with their own drummer: Rob Hunter on "Don't Need Your Money" from Amsterdam in 1984, Joe Hasselvander on "Architect Of Fear" from Erlangen in 1991, and Mike Heller on "The Power" from Clifton, New Jersey in 2022. Gallagher's understanding of the Amsterdam tape is that it is a radio broadcast somebody sent him. "The Wreckage", the slow bluesy one near the end, began with Gallagher finger-picking an acoustic and wondering how it would sound played loud; he has said an EP is exactly where a left turn like that belongs, because an album has to hold together. Costin Chioreanu directed the video for the title track, and the CD appeared as a thousand numbered, band-signed copies sold only through the official store, each with a fiftieth-anniversary patch.