From Rush to R30 - A listening retrospective: Caress of Steel

Caress of Steel: You'll be hard pressed to find a Rush fan that lists this album in their top three favorite albums, but more likely you'll find this album near the bottom of the favorites list. But, even being at the near bottom of my favorites list, it's still a damn fine album. "The Necromancer", a sequel of sorts to "By-tor and the Snow Dog", is a solid track, and the worst criticism of "The Fountain of Lamneth" series is it's a little disjointed with "Didacts and Narpets" sounding slightly out of place when compared with the rest of the track. At least the CD version doesn't take liberties with the tracking order like the cassette tape did. And if there ever were two anthems for growing old, there couldn't be two more opposites on the same album like the introspective "Lakeside Park" " and the slightly humorous "I Think I'm Going Bald". Caress of Steel, if anything, is several great ideas packed together in such a way that they don't really flow together, almost like the B-Side to the excellent (save for "Rivendell") Fly By Night. Still, I like this album, even though it might not be the first one I'll pick if I want to listen to Rush.


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