Finally, Geddy Lee's shrill vocal style works really well with the aggression of the song and gives it even more personality. It’s a wonderful mix of the heavy and the grandiose, a great way to usher in this new phase of Rush. For starters, “Bastille Day” is one of the best openers Rush ever conjured up the hard punk-ish riffs meld perfectly with the bombastic solos and varied drumming, while Neil Peart’s lyrics are just as grand as the music itself. With such a short tracklist, I suppose it would be smart to tackle both parts of the album separately and start with the shorter tunes. Tracks 4-5 are the lengthy epics that focus on weightier topics and consist of several different sections spliced together. That is to say, a merging of two styles: tracks 1-3 are more in a riff-heavy hard rock vein consisting of tighter, leaner arrangements. The tracklist is very much a tale of two sides. I’m not going to say this was just too forward-thinking for the critics back then, but I am of the idea that Caress of Steel was the true beginning of what we would come to know as “classic Rush” for the rest of the 70s and early 80s. It may not have helped either that the lyrics were starting to become more impenetrable and complex, especially on the side-two epic “Fountain of Lamneth.” But the more you dig into this album, the more fascinating and ambitious it starts to become. And one look at the Caress of Steel must have been very striking back then: five songs? Two epics, one of them 20 minutes? For comparison, the longest song they’d made up to that point was “By-Tor and the Snow Dog,” at a mere eight-and-a-half minutes. Granted, I can actually see why they might not have taken to it at first playing progressive rock in the 70s, while commercially sound for some bands, was also like painting a huge target on your chest for music critics. But for all we know about the latter record, is Caress of Steel really as bad as critics once proclaimed? After all, they were completely unwilling to heed any advice about becoming more commercial and accessible, eventually paving the way for what would become the super-successful 2112 and its highly ambitious title epic. As you’d imagine, the group must have thought the end was near and that they’d have to disband at their label’s insistence. Essentially, this is Rush’s darkest hour commercially and critically the tour to support the album was even called the “Down the Tubes” tour by the band themselves due to poor sales and concert attendance. I think most hardcore Rush fans are aware of Caress of Steel’s infamous reputation at this point, but I’ll give a small rundown of it for the uninitiated.
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