2112

This album has an amazing first side, and a terrible second Side. Though I am not sure why Rush needed to put seven completely different songs together into one really long song, the title song 2112, is quite an excellent song, with some great drum work, amazing vocals and limber basslines. After this song, a second side of mediocre classic rock songs rear they're ugly head and destroy what left of an otherwise four star album.

I guess I should go over the title song. Well, as I mentioned before, there is no reason to put seven completely different songs on to one song. They dont share the same key, tempo, or at some points time sigs (though, this is in the early age of Rush when they mostly did 4/4). Either way, that dosent make it a bad song at all, that just means I dont consider an epic. Now for the song! It starts with some very cool effect, then explodes in a very high energy and exciting instrumental section, filled with some amazing drums and bass, (btw, I still do not recognize Lifeson as a very good guitar player for only playing the pentatonic). This eventually leads to the very cool second part of the song themples of Syrinx. I guess this is where the concept beggins, with Geddy's screaching vocals displaying a very powerful (and maybe oppressive) voice of a priest of some religion that obviously rules the planet, led by computers and temples. Musically this song rocks! Very hard and very metalish, with some rock solid guitar and vox. After this song there is a brief silence, then a detuned guitar that quickly turns very pretty and rythmic... leading to the third part of the song: Discovery. This parts about some random guy in a waterfall who finds an ancient musical device (a guitar), then realises how beautiful it is and how he can show this to the priests who rule the world, so they can show the world, so everyone can make pretty music. musically, the song is a bit slow and melodic, with some pretty vocals and guitar, then an electric blast comes in and the next part comes in. Presentation is very cool to me because it flops from the soft acoustic parts with the man showing the priests the guitar, to the very hard screchy vocals of the priests smashing our hero to the ground, and with that, I have explained this part of the song. Oracle the dream is probably the weakest song on the album musically, as in there is nothing interesting. Of course the concept goes on with our hero walking home sadly then falling asleep and dreaming of an oracle showing him earth 1000 years ago with beauty and music ect ect. Siloloquy is a very sad song with a very cool guitar solo ( I said it) and very nice vocals! The last lines of this song are just about our hero feeling sorry for hmiself and then killing himself, because he know that life will be meaningless without the beauty that he has uncovered. From then on is the grand finale, an instrumental part, not as good as the first, but good none the less! If I had to review this song, I would give it 4.5 ****

Now the rest of the album is not ear shattering bad, but reminds me of an early led zeppelin album, so it's pretty bad! The first song, a passage to bangkok, is pretty nice with some cool experimentation, but with some otherwise lame lyrics. The twilight zone dosent make sense to me, the drums are doing a country kind of one-two beat, and everything else goes with it to sound almost like VERY electric country. The lyrics are a bit cooler, but dont impress to much. Lessons has a cool easy strum riff, but with some punk rock rebelious lyrics that dont make much sense either. Tears is probably my favirote song outside of the title song, a very slow ballady song with very sweet lyrics and cool mellotron. Something for nothing is kinda the closer to the title song, basically dashing our hero's dreams into the dust, musically a strereotypical classic rock song.

Well, A very mixed up album with some very high highs and some low low's. Overall I rat

3***