RUSH — 2112 (review)

Album · 1976 · Hard Rock

4/5 · 2010-11-29
The Block

Welcome to the twilight zone.

2112 is Rush’s fourth studio album and is arguably their best. It is also one of their most successful albums reaching 61 on the album chart tin 1976. It is also a three-time multi platinum album, definitely making it their best selling album to date. The main track, “2112”, talks of a man who finds a guitar and discovers how to play different music than that of the Priests of the Temples. When they find out they destroy his guitar and goes to a cave to commit suicide. Musicians on the album include Neal Peart on drums, Geddy Lee on bass and vocals, and Alex Lifeson on guitars.

The first song, “2112”, begins with a spacey opening that dies down into an awesome riff by Alex Lifeson. Rush employs a cool echo effect on the riff, which blends in nicely with the synths and brilliant drumming of Neal Peart. They then transfer to the main lick which is speedy and totally instrumental for the first couple of minutes. The riff keeps repeating until Alex Lifeson has a great guitar solo, where the music slows down to accompany it. Then a very good sounding banjo joins the party, making it a very well rounded song. There is also a soft vocal section right after the instrumental section that then leads into harsher vocals. Neal Peart does a very nice job in this section drumming wise. Overall this is a great effort by Geddy Lee in terms of writing this song. It has very nice guitars and vocals, which become awesome licks and choruses.

A “Passage to Bangkok” starts off with a really cool riff, which sounds a lot like the Oriental Riff, by Alex Lifeson. The chorus is good, though the vocals are a bit high and squeaky, but they somewhat blend with the rest of the song. It then transfers to a cool instrumental section which is all guitar and bass, but than quickly goes back to the choruses and electric guitar. Tool uses the main riff of this song to introduce their song “Cold and Ugly” when they play live.

“Twilight Zone” starts off with just electric guitars and drums, which then transfers into a chorus that is much slower than the rest of the songs. The drums in this song seem to be much more basic and plain sounding. At the end of the song there is a really cool echo effect on the chorus that leads into a screaming guitar solo by Alex Lifeson. The song is based on two episodes of the Twilight Zone by Rod Serling that are “Will the Real Martian Stand Up?” and “Stopover in a Quiet Town”.

The next song, “Lessons”, has a cool acoustic opening with soft vocals that go back and forth from high pitched to a little lower. The chorus is a bit weak but it sounds good in the song, which employs the symbol very well. There is also another guitar solo to end the song.

“Tears” has a very good use of synths that go along nicely with the slow beginning vocals. Since it is slower it really breaks the album up because it is a lot different from the others, which are much faster. Rush also has the first guest performer of the album in Hugh Syme who plays mellotron on this song.

“Something for Nothing” features a nice riff opening up the song with the rest of the instruments joining in eventually. It starts a little slow put then it builds up to have a similar riff to that in “Passage to Bangkok”. There is very solid drumming, and yet another guitar solo to round it off.

Yet another great release from Rush has come to my grasp and I have enjoyed it deeply. One thing I find curious is that almost every song ends with a guitar solo by Alex Lifeson, though this necessarily is not a bad thing since he is a vey solid guitarist. For their solid effort the deserve 4 stars, easy.