RUSH

This is one of my favorite Rush albums mainly because I like great hard rock as much as I like progressive rock. If I'm in my car driving this is the CD I will pull out from my Rush collection, followed closely by Fly By Night. For me this is a like a poor mans version of Led Zeppelin II and even a poor mans version from talented musicians like Rush doing their best attempt at copying Led Zeppelin comes out pretty darn good. There is no point doing a track by track rating of this album if based upon the criteria of a progressive rock review, because if that is the only criteria this album would fail miserably other than perhaps Working Man which to this day remains one of my top 10 Rush tracks. What is more interesting here is to wonder how great Rush would have been had they continued down this track and gone from a poor man's version of Led Zeppelin to a hard/blues rock band of equal caliber once they perfected this hard rock blues sound. Of course, since they chose to go down a more progressive direction we will never no if they could have been the next Led Zeppelin, a thought very appealing to myself. Rush is one of my favorite bands right up there with King Crimson, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath so in the end I am able to appreciate them in all phases and paths of their career and can appreciate this first Rush album as much as any other album in their history. For that reason alone I can not give this album anything less than the four stars that it deserves.