Raphael has always been elusive about the particulars in public, he says, because there are other people involved whose identities must be protected; the following will take you inside the car on that fateful day, July 25, 1997, in the words of the one who lived through it. (Diary quotes in bold.)
Raphael recalls, "I didn't see it coming. I was looking out the window." The last thing he remembers before the crash, he says, is hearing the driver of the car say simply, "Oh my God." There was time for no more. "...In a tone of voice I had never heard before, and will never forget...
"The next thing I knew I was laying back - my seat was twisted and my broken seatbelt was laying in my lap. The force of the impact had ripped it from the side of the car. I was concious of extreme heat inside the car. The windows were all fogged up and sweat was pouring off my forehead. The glass of the windshield was cracked. Everything looked wrong.
Looking over with great difficulty, the guitarist saw that his friend was also seriously hurt, with horrific injuries to the head, chest, abdomen, and feet; and bleeding badly from a gash under the chin.
"It was as if time had stopped; everything was still and silent exept for the gentle patter of rain on the car."
Police arrived at the scene within minutes thanks to a witness who had called them immediately after seeing the disaster unfold before his eyes. One officer would later recall that he gasped when he saw the cars, looked over at his partner, and shook his head, sure there could be no survivors.
He struggled with the door in an attempt to free his friend, but it was jammed and twisted, and his arms were numb, tingling and useless as if they had fallen asleep.
Police were shocked to see the dazed guitarist walk falteringly around the demolished vehicle and try to open the driver side door as several witnesses ran forward to join in the effort. He told them, "I'm O.K. We have to get this door open!" Arriving paramedics immediately grabbed the guitarist. "The next thing I knew two people in white grabbed me and put a neckbrace on my neck. It dug into the raw scrape where the seatbelt had burned the flesh from my chest and neck as they pulled me toward the ambulance. I protested, wanting to stay by the car and make sure they got _____ out, and one of them told me, 'Buddy, you don't know how bad you're hurt right now.' They yelled ahead to another EMT that I was going to pass out and dragged me along toward the flashing red lights which were rapidly fading into blackness." It would take the "Jaws of Life" to free the driver of the car.
The two ambulances who responded were full of moaning victims of the carnage that took place that day, and the former music teacher remembers, "They didn't have a stretcher for me so they layed me on a rail inside of the ambulance. I don't remember much about the ride to the hospital except a horrible pain in my belly. The next thing I remember, the people in white were pulling me onto a stretcher at the hospital. As they pulled me out of the ambulance, I saw through a haze the face of my mother, wracked with worry, and father, and one of my older brothers. If anyone else was there, I don't remember. It was like a horrible nightmare, only I knew this was no dream."
As they removed his clothing in the emergency room, he remembers, "I asked my mother, 'Is it bad?' My mother has never lied to me. She said softly, 'It's bad.' and started crying." He could hear his friend screaming somewhere behind a curtain next to him.
Preliminary tests were promising; despite severe contusions and hematomas, no broken bones or internal damage was identified. Unfortunately, it would take months of suffering and thosands of dollars of tests to identify the extent of the damage; the doctors had missed several fractured bones and extensive muscle damage to the guitarists shoulder and abdominal muscles. It would take weeks before anyone realized that he had also sustained substantial brain damage, and it would take 2 years of rehabilitation before he would return to the stage. "It was very creepy, the song was still in my machine when I got home from the hospital. Doctors were telling me I would never perform again."
Raphael says he was very bitter about the whole experience, and swore he would never finish the album. The recordings sat collecting dust until August of this year, when, after years of fan requests to hear the material, he quietly put 5 of the finished tracks on MP3.com under the name Angelrage. What happened next, he says, was totally unexpected. "The thing just exploded!" he says. "The song came out of nowhere and within about 2 weeks was #1 on the International MP3.com Christian Metal Charts." Fight The Devil stayed in the top 20 for over a year, above such venerable heavyweights as Bride, King's X, and Michael Sweet (Stryper), peaking at #1 three separate times; and the band's website, angelrage.com, has recieved visitors from countries all around the globe, including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Chile, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. The site is available in 9 languages and features state-of-the-art webdesign. The title track, once described by one of Raphael's former students as "Ozzy Osbourne meets Jesus Christ", has been downloaded over 20,000 times.
"People are intrigued," he says. "They don't know who we really are. Are we really a Christian Metal band? That's for us to know and you to find out. We prefer to let the music speak for itself." The band's intense music and controversial artwork has brought the band to the attention of several unlikely sources, including a German Radio Station, Radio Quer 104,6, which featured the band in an episode of their Melodic Metal show "Overdrive". "Things are happening so fast it's hard to take it all in," he wrote. "In just 2 months we have had 3 distribution offers, 2 in the US and one in Germany."
For Raphael, the band represents coming to terms with his past, and a bold step into an unexpected future: "I never thought in a million years that it would get this kind of reaction. In 2 months it's turned into the most successful thing I have ever done. It's a testament to the old saying, God works in mysterious ways, at least with Angelrage."