TEST FOR ECHO

Never mind this album. It's not a complete piece of trash like Vapor trails, but it's close to it. Especially when you compare it to Rush's great old stuff like Hemispheres and A Farewell to Kings, and even to their good but less good 80s albums, Rush has hit their artistic slump these past few albums. Now, I've never heard anything by Rush that I thought was BAD, like horribly bad, but this one sure doesn't live up to even modest standards in progressive music, or even good not-prog music. I mean, at least on Roll the Bones the songwriting itself was really very good, but on this it's just... blah. So what if it is guitar driven, it's not in a good way; it sounds scratchy (or at least to my ears) and more like a background supporting the rest of the music in much of the album. Even this years' Snakes and Arrows has its decencies in comparison. I think I could literally write better music than most of this album, and that's incredibly sad considering we're talking about Rush compared to me. Only get this album if you are an extremely die hard fan or collector of Rush music (like me).