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Rush - Grace Under Pressure CD (album) cover

GRACE UNDER PRESSURE

Rush

 

Heavy Prog

3.69 | 1299 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Stooge
2 stars Ten studio albums in approximately ten years is an impressive feat, especially if the quality remains high. However, trying to keep up this rate of making roughly one album a year is not an easy task. On Grace Under Pressure, we learn that these three prog-gods from Canada may be mortal after all.

I'm not saying that this album is without some good material. "Distant Early Warning", "Red Sector A", and "The Enemy Within" represent the strongest tracks on this album. "Red Sector A", my favorite song on the album, is a great example of Rush musically setting a strong tone for the lyrics, in this case about the Holocaust. "Distant Early Warning" does this to a lesser extent. The strength of "The Enemy Within" lies in the bass line that drives the song and Geddy's vocal delivery.

The remaining tracks don't really connect with me. There are some nice moments in some of the tracks (Lifeson's lick in the chorus of "Afterimage", for example), but they are few and far between. "Kid Gloves" and "Red Lenses" are the two weakest songs on the album. Solid musicianship, but they have shown that they are capable of constructing much stronger material.

I can hear The Police influence in the band's performance on this album. This is probably most evident in Alex Lifeson's guitar work (in his rhythm playing and in certain leads found in songs like "Afterimage" and parts of "The Enemy Within").

I'm not exactly an anti-synth guy, but I feel that this album suffers from an overuse of synthesizers and synth effects. Some of the songs would benefit from a "stripping down" into a more traditional power trio format (guitar, bass, drums). I could imagine improvements being made to "The Body Electric" in this regard.

With a band with such a massive discography, put this album low on the priority list of Rush albums to purchase.

Stooge | 2/5 |

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