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Rush - Hemispheres CD (album) cover

HEMISPHERES

Rush

 

Heavy Prog

4.38 | 2703 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Bonnek
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
4 stars Hemispheres finds Rush right in the middle between sheer genius and overblown ambitions. The 18 minute title track contains plenty to drool over and it is their only 10 minute+ piece that really holds together as one song (opposed to 2112 and the Fountain which were just a song cycles). Still, not all sections flow equally strong. The music is amazing. The vocal melodies sometimes leg a bit behind.

For the first time on a Rush album, the shorter tracks are very accomplished as well. Circumstances and The Trees are very clever and intensive songs that would serve as a template for the tracks on the following albums.

La Villa Strangiato is simply beyond grasp. It's a display of musical freedom. It starts off very innocently with a pleasantly building intro, then there's the first guitar solo that is one of the best of the many exceptional guitar solo's that flourish almost every Rush album. After that it just starts dashing in all possible and impossible directions with 4 more minutes of surging riffs and deceptive time signatures till it ends very suddenly and abruptly.

Rush would take another approach after this album and start releasing more consistent albums but even so, we will be forever nostalgic to '77-'78, their short but dazzling prog moment. 4.5 stars

Bonnek | 4/5 |

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