ROLL THE BONES

A very routine album has Rush going by the numbers with poor production values and badly mixed sounds. The guitars are repetitive and commercial sounding. The drums sound like Peart is banging the pots and pans in his kitchen. Lee sounds bored and his bass is nothing special here. Apart from one or two shining lights "Roll the Bones" fades into obscurity and is perhaps as bad as "Presto", though this is perhaps their worst album. Unlike the disappointing "Presto", "Roll the Bones" does have a few excellent tracks.

Dreamline is a great rocker with some innovative guitar work and is well structured. Bravado sounds good overall, and has a nice litle riff driving it. Roll The Bones is perhaps the best song on the album with a cool memorable lyric; "why are we here, because we're here, roll the bones..." or better still, "why does it happen, because it happens, roll the bones..." It has a groovy hook and sounds great live. The film clip promo was rather fun and it showed that the band could still enjoy their music, even if they shed their prog traits during this era. Where's My Thing (Part IV of the "Gangster Of Boats Trilogy") is the first instrumental for years from the power trio, and it genuinely stands out as a highlight with the band letting loose and doing what they do best, rocking the roof off. After this we are inundated with mediocrity fillers such as the dismal The Big Wheel, Heresy and Ghost Of A Chance. Neurotica is better with a moderate tempo and some melodic hooks, and the album ends on the rather traditional You Bet Your Life, that is forgettable but sounds good while it plays.

The problem with the album is the lack of passion, the band sound tired and the songs for the most part are ruined by poor production, as though they were not using a sound engineer at all. It is so badly mixed that it would do well to re release this album as a remaster with remixes of the original masters. It certainly would not hurt because honestly this album is a slog to get through with only the aforementioned tracks to recommend it to anyone but the diehard Rush collector.

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