CARESS OF STEEL

Despite being one to praise bands for being ambitious and trying something out, even if it doesn't quite work out, I still feel like there's a limit to how much credit I can give. To make things clearer, let's just say that I completely understand how this album was a flop both critically and commercially. After the slight leaning on prog found on certain songs in Fly By Night, Rush clearly thought that they could go so much further, creating an album in which 2 of the songs are 10 minutes or over, one of them almost 20. The issue with this is that the band seemed to be lacking ideas in the music department, with songs that while capturing more of the sound that Rush was to have, didn't change the fact that the songs sounded very uninspired all thoughout, the biggest offenders being the two epics, which both lack cohesion and sounded heavily padded.

The best song on the album is also the opening song, Bastille Day, and even it doesn't really match up to previous albums in terms of quality. It's a short, energetic song embracing a more metal tinged sound, but I personally find the riffs to be lackluster and everything to just sound kinda flat. The melody for the chorus is quite nice, and the solo is alright, but nothing here stands out to me, it's just an average song. I Think I'm Going Bald somehow manages to miss the one thing that has made Rush consistently great, even during weaker releases, incredible instrumentation, with the majority of the song sounding extremely bland, with awful lyrics and easily one of the most poorly executed solos that Alex Lifeson has performed within Rush's career, with nothing seeming to come together quite right at all, the mixing especially being off, with the guitar coming through really scratchily in places, further diminishing the enjoyment to be found here. Lakeside Park is also nothing particularly bad, although once again, I do find it to be quite unimpressive, defiitely being one of the weaker mid paced tracks Rush has put out, feeling very by the numbers in essentially every way, although Neil Peart does add some nice flair to aspects of the song. The worst part of the album is undoubtedly the final 2 songs however, and I'll talk about both of them interchangeably, as they both feel very similar to me, and both have the exact same problems. These songs both have some aspects os them which are great, such as the slow, atmospheric section of The Necromancer or the insane drum solo in Fountain Of Lamneth, but these are quickly replaced with either generic, or straight up bad sections that display next to nothing of any merit. This is especially present in the Fountain, as the back half of it is mostly comprised of slow passages that lack any sort of decent melody or beauty, being boring to a painful extent, especially when factoring just how long the song is. There's also the issue where even riffs that by all means should sound really great to me, just don't, the placement in the songs and the common lack of cohesion is what I say is to blame, with each song feeling like a variety of concepts and riffs loosely strung together, giving no moment any particular impact at all, no matter how good it could otherwise be. I just cannot enjoy anything to do with these in the slightest, and considering how much of the album they take up, it reflects the album extremely poorly.

While some people enjoy this album, and I cannot fault them for that, I personally find this album to be an absolute black hole of entertainment, and never has 44 minutes felt so long to me than when trying to actively listen to this album. The shorter songs lack the punch that their others tend to, and their more progressive compositions fall flat on their faces, easily being some of the most boring prog music I've heard. I'm very glad that Rush managed to bring out so many excellent albums past this point, but this album is one that I don't really plan on ever returning to.

Best tracks: Bastille Day

Weakest tracks: I think I'm Going Bald, The Necromancer, Fountain of Lamneth

Verdict: I genuinely cannot think of a single person that I would recommend this album to in good spirit, I find the best track on here to still be somewhat dull, and for almost the entire rest of it to be stuff that I honestly never want to hear again. To me, this is boring to a painful extent.