HOLD YOUR FIRE

This was very controversial era in Rush career. Being huge 70's prog rock fan I surprisinlgy find that Rush era the best period in their career. 81-87 albums are better for me that those recorded in 70's by the band. Hold Your Fire is filled with very beautiful melodies and great almost orchestral arrangments. It starts with very dynamic song Force Ten which is good as opener. Synthesizers don't bite that much as on previous release. It's just perfect. Time Stand Still is a hit song with additional vocasl of female singer Aimee Mann, it's great song of course but better avoid the video cos it looks pretty naive. Alex Lifeson looks like...aahh nevermind. Next couple of songs are really good and if someone thought Rush went pop... well I wish all pop bands at the time had such many hit songs on their albums. Open Secrets and Second Nature are AOR-like songs but it's something incredible in the backing not distorted guitar parts. I think the pure genious was decision of doing it that light wide way. Peter Collins was responsible for that and glory to the man. Prime Mover i a bit more vivd track than two previous ones and it's still excellent. I really enjoy that Signature guitar licks that soung very 80's and it was signs of the times. Lock And Key and Mission are very very good as well. The first of them was used for another video for this album and it's probably the closest to what we can call prog rock on here. Mission is spacy beautiful sound with so much emotion and passion. Turn The Page is the most energetic song along with Force Ten and I like bass parts in this one. Two last songs aren't so good unfortunatelly. Thai Shan is very quiet not rocking tune with lots of keyboards. Not my kind of stuff I must admit and High Water is a bit better but still not close to hits like Time Stand Still, Second Nature or Prime Mover. I could give this album 5 stars but I don't want to be controversial plus I don't like two songs on that. So it goes 4+. One of my favorite Rush albums without shade of doubt