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Rush > 2112 > Reviews > Metalich
Rush - 2112

More than a Great Album - 97%

Metalich, May 6th, 2007

Here we are, four albums to date in a scant 2 years and Rush crashes upon the music masses with an opus of concussive proportions. The spirit of live rocking collides with progressive music, mixed with dual edged lyrics to burn in the crucible of one angry band, forging an opus in 2112. Within its scorched halls hangs hell bent guitar riffs that equally turn to soft acoustic passages. Lifeson is literally on fire with enough energy to personally scorch his share of the track into the vinyl. Awesome percussion as always, and not just drumming my friends; Peart continues to expand his kit. Not that it matters, as he’s probably the only man alive that could take Lars’ thrice damned trash cans and own Hammersmith. Lee’s vocals move up and down, screaming and singing, with his base work perfectly marrying rhythm and riff into a masterwork weapon that destroys and heals with each stroke.

“We've taken care of everything, the words you hear the songs you sing”

Opening up, the first song goes coast to coast to comprise all of side one (for those of us who still spin an album or two). “2112” is a story that pays creative tribute to the classic novel of Ayn Rand, Anthem. It portrays a totalitarian future of collectivist domination through art and media, individualism crushed by the spoon fed will of the people’s “Representatives” – In this case priests. Fitting actually, as in real life, you can’t see God, so his priests dictate “His will” to you. So the secular equivalent would be the intangible “Will of the people” and the necessity of “Their will” to be dictated by similar minions.

Into this oppressive world comes a man who discovers a guitar buried in ancient ruins. He manages to create music with it and is delighted at what he has discovered. His excitement turns to horror as the priests react dismissive and angry at his discovery. They tell him that it is a “Toy” of the past that caused the downfall of man, to forget it for it doesn’t “Fit the plan”, then promptly destroy the instrument. In other words, the individualism inherent in creating music with such an instrument is bad, for it is not of collective design. The “People” didn’t do it, he did it himself. Only what they create is good. Finally, typically of what a dictator can’t control, they destroy it.

From here the man becomes depressed, as he dreams of other worlds. There, the people play the music he has heard and are free to “Live and grow”. Those people are revealed to be ancestors that fled this world when the current regime took control. The story turns dark as the man sees a world of freedom, realizing he can’t go on pretending to live in this world where his reawakened self is being crushed. He escapes the system in the only way he knows, by committing suicide. The story ends with the return of the elder race to finally throw done the federation once and for all.

But that is not the real story of 2112.

“Just think of what my life might be, in a world like I have seen”

The real story is about a band that just finished creating an album of deep progressive rock that received bad press. The critics were vicious in assailing Caress of Steel and overall reaction was poor, so poor the band named the ensuing tour the “Down the Tubes Tour”. This led to pressure from their record label to drop the “pretentious” stories and music, to return to the fun Zeppelin rock style of the self-titled debut.

This should sound familiar to any music fan, for it is the repeating story of all music. Any metal fan will recognize what carnage it can cause. It is the story of hair metal in the 80’s, or the wholesale abandonment of metal in the 90’s. The siren call of success over substance has led many a fine band to their demise. But for all of those times bands have played the game of the labels, selling out to go the route of artistic insignificance, or in the case of the 80’s killing and burying metal six feet deep, this story ends different.

“Attention all planets of the Solar Federation. We have assumed control.”

Rush didn’t play the game. Instead, they got angry, deciding to go down in flames writing their own music instead of compromising, so they came out swinging at the label and critics with 2112. If you think about the story within “2112”, and the story of why the band wrote it, they are the one and the same. In fact, this is primarily why I laid out the whole story above, for you to see the comparison of art imitating life. An artist faces oppression by a power group that wants to force them into line, to play that groups game. But the artist refuses to play the game; they would rather lose on their own terms versus compromising their freedom. “2112” is a great story of a collectivist future, but a better story of the one time a band looked straight at a label and raised their middle finger with a hearty “Fuck You”. But for Rush this wasn’t suicide, but success.

What about the music? How does music stack up? To put it simply, the song “2112” itself combines heavy riffs, great percussion, the intelligent lyrics of a good story, and straight out passion to create one of the greatest pieces of music to dominate a full side of vinyl. The lyrics tell a story, but the music tells and advances the story as well. Twenty minutes roars by and you will have hardly noticed. This is the signature Rush song and a piece of influential progressive goodness. If you listen to Caress of Steel then 2112 you can hear the difference - It’s profound. 2112 has that extra passion behind it that drives the content forward.

After the opus of “2112” the tracks return to earth and become a little more hit and miss. “A Passage to Bangkok” is an interesting conceptual hard rock piece that tells of the band touring the world to hit the prime drug spots. The music is good and thematically well representing the Far East journey described. Fun song actually, but the band probably enjoyed too much smoke on that one for the next song is “The Twilight Zone” with its zany lyrics. Not a bad song, but doesn’t bare the test of repeats well. Cute lyrics are like that sometimes, requiring space between listens so they don’t crossover from cute to silly. “Tears” sufferings from the skip button treatment also at times. It is as a moody slow ballad seemingly out of step with their entire discography. It’s not a bad song, just slightly above average and my score is representative of this track, along with “Twilight Zone” dragging down the album down just a bit. “Lessons” holds its own, being solid and a fine piece of music melding smooth acoustics and axe work, Lifeson channeling the Zepps again in his spotlight solo work.

Finally, the album blazes to an end with another great piece in “Something for Nothing”. After a nice intro, we see the control drop and the passion boil forth again to scorch the landscape, guitars crashing into Lee screaming more than the lyrics of a song, but the mission of the whole album: “What you own is your own kingdom, what you do is your own glory”. The lyrics say it all; with this song being an excellent piece in its own right as well as an exclamation point to a fantastic album.

Part progressive, narrative, rock, science fiction, and metal, but in sum nothing but phenomenal. 2112 is this and more, for this is not so much a review as it is a clarion call to not let this album go unnoticed and its story forgotten. It’s not a matter of whether this should be in your collection, but when.