Rush - Clockwork Angels (Roadrunner)

Finally, during the first chorus of track number eight on Clockwork Angels, a marvellous song by the name of The Wreckers, everything makes sense. It’s the first song on this surprising album that actually sounds like the Rush of mid-period fame we’ve all come to know and love over the years, despite it having a guitar intro that must have been hatched by the band after a prolonged session of listening to their old sixties favourites by bands like the Searchers. It’s the first song that comes equipped with a Grade A, cast Iron chorus that simply screams RUSH at you, and it sends a shiver down the spine as you realize everything’s going to be alright. It was touch and go though, oh yes – it was touch and go...

It was touch and go simply because the songs preceding The Wreckers (and, come to think of it, the ones succeeding it too) sound like nothing so much as the band being just what It is, with nothing added and nothing taken away. What it is, of course, is a supremely talented and experienced power trio, born of the line of Cream and Led Zeppelin (never forget that, taking Robert Plant out of the Zepequation, you are left with a power trio of apocalyptic proportions), and on Clockwork Angels they play just like that, locking in together on a succession of riff driven songs that give plenty of space for funky grinding (Geddy Lee’s strident basswork is a particular pleasure throughout), but allow little room for the floridly overdone synth augmentation that had become the band’s trademark on albums like Hold Your Fire. In fact it’s really only on The Wreckers that that ‘big rock’ sound comes to the fore in earnest. It's almost as if the band has woken from a long sleep and remembered it's roots in heavy metal and power rock, at the same time forgetting its technology compulsions in a wave of Alex Lifeson propelled riff-mania and Neil Peart inspired skin beating nirvana.

All of which comes, as I mentioned at the top of this review, as a bit of a surprise. It’s a refreshing surprise, though – the band hasn’t sounded this energized in a long time, as they shed the shackles of their prog history and get down to some serious – and welcome – rocking out. Great stuff.