HOLD YOUR FIRE

Hold Your Fire is the twelfh full-lenght studio album by Canadian progressive rock act Rush. It´s one of the first albums from the band that I listened to when I was younger. My interest was ignited when I listend to the song Prime Mover on a heavy metal compilation album I got for my ( I think) fourteenth birthsday. So there among songs from bands like Motörhead, Megadeth and Acid Reign was something completely different and allthough I was intrigued it wasn´t until maybe five or six years later that I remembered that song and purchased the album.

The music on Hold Your Fire is Rush as we know them from the eighties. Lots of synth, sophisticated drumming, powerful and melodic basslines, beautiful open guitar chords and great solos and to top it off Geddy Lee´s easily recognizable and distinct vocals. There are many great songs on the album like Lock and Key, Turn the Page and Prime Mover which has always been one of my favorites from the band. It´s not an album with any songs below standard, but on the other hand there are flaws that means that the album isn´t really excellent either. First of all Rush do go a bit overboard with the excessive use of synth on the album. It´s not always tasteful and some of the songs suffer because of it. The songwriting isn´t the most compositionally intriguing either but then again it´s been like this for a couple of albums by now so no big surprise there. But besides those minor flaws Hold Your Fire is a good album IMO.

The musicianship is of course outstanding. Rush is probably the best power trio in the world. Three guys creating this much sound is simply amazing.

The production is the most high end eighties sound that Rush would ever have and some are totally put of by this. I kind of like the production, but understand the critics.

Hold Your Fire is a special album to me as it is one of the first Rush albums that I discovered and because Prime Mover is one of my all-time favorite tracks from the band. But my overall rating will still only be 3 stars as not all songs are of this high quality. Hold Your Fire is Good but only occasionally excellent.