Review Summary: After a long career, the band show no signs of slowing down or moving on.
9 of 59 thought this review was well writtenThought I'd join in on the
Cockwork Angles review rush (pun intended), but I'm not gonna troll review and five it, I don't want to be redundant. Well, let's just say I've never been the biggest Rush fan. I love
2112, but other than that, I've never really heard much of their work. They have too big a discography for me to be bothered backtracking. Through hype and mass trolling, I decided to check out
Clockwork Orange. Hailed one of their best in the last twenty years, I can objectively say that doesn’t mean much. And I haven’t even heard any of their work in the last twenty years.
As Geddy himself says it... many, many times, is that he “can’t stop thinkin’ big.” While there’s no doubt that Rush were thinkin’ big for this record, I can’t help but think that their quality of thinking has degraded since their early days. At points during the album, it sounds like they’re trying too hard to be catchy, which is a little ironic, seeing as the album lacks anything memorable. I’m sure if you listened to the album enough, it could be memorable, but I just feel that Rush have created something that just slips by. It doesn’t engage you and the song lengths are unjustifiable for such uninteresting music. And yes, the song lengths on this album are generally around the five-minute mark, give or take.
Coupled with some lacklustre production, the instrumental work on this album pretty bland. The drums have their moment to shine at points, having me tapping along, but are unfortunately drowned out by the guitar, bass and Geddy’s rather annoying vocals. But on top of that, I must say, the bass is probably the best part about this album and the only thing that really kept me listening. Unlike a lot of bands these days, Rush haven’t drowned out the bass. It’s at the forefront of the album and it’s surprisingly fun to listen to in its intricacy. It brings a sort of funkiness or spice that the album would drastically suffer from without, most notably on the intro for
Seven Cities of Gold.
As I mentioned earlier, Geddy Lee’s vocals are rather irritating on this album. They do sound quite pleasant at some points, while at others they make me cringe. This is demonstrated quite well in the song
Halo Effect, where the vocals are great at some points, really. At other times in the song... not so much.
After hearing it a few times, I can honestly say,
I don’t quite get it. The album is great compared to your average Rock band’s standards, but for a Progressive Rock legend like Rush, this is just average. I think the band need to hang up their hats. Or guitars. And cymbals.
