A FAREWELL TO KINGS

A Farewell to Kings - the best Rush album? Well, Moving Pictures, 2112 or Hemispheres are pretty close too, but this is an absolute masterpiece from one of the best bands in the history of rock music. Everything is in it's place: the high pitched vocals and the pounding bass sound of Geddy Lee, the hard rocking guitar and the fantastic solos of Alex Lifeson and the brilliant drumming of Neil Peart.

It's quite interesting that Rush were at their peak during the late 70's and early 80's, a period of time that saw the rise of punk and the fall of prog - yet there they were, a young trio from Canada playing an innovative mix of prog and hard rock. A Farewell to Kings is a brilliant showcase of their compositional talents, their incredible skill and the huge amount of feeling they managed to inject into their music.

The album has a wide range of different styles and moods. Side 1 and the title track start with the blissful acoustic guitar intro, wich then turns into one of the best songs of Rush; driven by the amazing riffing of Lifeson and backed up by the solid rhythm section and the strong vocals and lyrics. This sets the overall tone for the album perfectly. Xanadu is a great epic with extremely catchy melodies and vocal lines and a brilliant, elegant guitar solo from Alex Lifeson.

At the beginning of Side 2 we have a bunch of shorter tracks. Closer to the Heart starts as a ballad and then slowly picks up pace and ends up as a great rock tune. CInderella Man is a beautiful track with another brilliant guitar solo. Madrigal is the only real ballad on the album, and a good and successful one. But then in the end we have Cygnus X-1, the first part of the epic space explorations of Rush. It's a heavy track with some quite hard riffing and drumming. The Hawkwind-type keyboard sound and the lyrics also give it a space rock edge. An utterly brilliant song!

So as a conclusion, I really can't say enough about the brilliance of this album and my words can't possibly do enough justice for this one, not in the least. Truly a magnificent album. The words "Essential: a masterpiece of progressive music" are rarely as appropriate as here.