Hold Your Fire

Having split with long-time producer Terry Brown after Signals (who co-produced every album from Fly by Night to then), it was only a matter of time before Rush fell into the same pack as their peers, altogether abandoning progressive rock for the younger, hipper synth-pop of the 80’s. Miraculously, Grace Under Pressure was still a really good effort, despite the overwhelming synthesizers. Power Windows wasn’t bad, but you could see that the band’s ideas were running thin. And then comes Hold Your Fire, which is the musical equivalent of the band bending over and receiving a major shafting from the sound of the era.

The sound on Hold Your Fire, while realistically a natural evolution from their other 80’s albums, is Rush at their most fragile and innocuous. The New Age leanings that were perceptible on their previous few releases are in full swing here: the result is an album that is soft, commercially appealing, and utterly devoid of the things that make Rush worth listening to. Where is the hard-riffed, technically astonishing rock outfit that tossed literarily brilliant epics in the face of skeptical critics and came out on top? Not here my friends. Here we have an aging band trying to recapture the acclaim of youth by doing things entirely different than they would have then. Alex Lifeson’s guitar hasn’t been a focal point on an album since 1981’s Moving Pictures. Think he couldn’t be utilized any less? Here’s he might as well not even been in the studio. He spends the duration of the album competing against the heavy synthesizer for supreme backing instrument that you’ll barely hear beneath the bass and vocals. Of course Geddy Lee fans can rejoice over this: the bass is everything. Even on this, the band’s mellowest album, Lee’s bass is still punchy and wonderful. His vocals are nothing special, though fans of his later, more expressive singing may enjoy it. Peart’s drumming isn’t particularly special either, as he concentrates more on being textural than anything else. This includes utilizing a lot of auxiliary percussive gimmickry, the kind that your New Wave types were synthesizing anyway. And speaking of synthesizers, they’re actually a little less persistent on this record. Not that they aren’t everywhere (they are), it’s just that they’re not as overwhelming as say, the fucking bass guitar. Yes, Geddy is good, but did Steve Harris mix this album or what?

So as for the songs, there aren’t even any highlights. The more energetic numbers of “Force Ten” and “Prime Mover” are the closest to past Rush rockers, while “Time Stand Still” has certain niceties to it. But otherwise the songs stick to the basic formula. Straightforward, unremarkable, non-progressive, bass-heavy, synth-heavy, pop-rockers that drone along for a few minutes longer than any of them should, occasionally featuring a castrated Lifeson solo. That’s the base recipe for a Hold Your Fire song, topped off with pretentious, pseudo-spiritual fluff for lyrical content. Sounds delicious.

I know a couple of Rush fans who really dig this album, so there’s no guarantee that you’ll hate it. But I’m certainly not afraid to say that it sucks, so I will. Hold Your Fire sucks. You like Rush? Well you better like them a hell of a lot before you spend a penny on this one.