Copyright © 2002 Atlantic
1. One Little Victory
2. Ceiling Unlimited
3. Ghost Rider
4. Peaceable Kingdom
5. Stars Look Down
6. How It Is
7. Vapor Trail
8. Secret Touch
9. Earthshine
10. Sweet Miracle
11. Nocturne
12. Freeze (Part IV Of 'Fear')
13. Out Of The Cradle
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In attempting to not churn out the archetypal dinosaur comeback attempt, Rush have made a conventional dinosaur out of heavy metal and the fragments of their neo-prog style. This isn't to write off the influence that metal bands (cough... Judas Priest) clearly had on the band during their formative years, notably "Rush" and "2012," but to say that these very professional musicians have thrown in the towel on distinction and made a hard rock extravaganza. As other sources have noted, the complexity of keyboard arrangements is gone in favor of R-n-B style background vocals harmonizing each main phrase, but this doesn't inject any new life, only a sense of fixity in time. Smoothly walking hard rock riffs fill spaces that used to take on the emptiness within rock music, attempting an emotional sustenance, and choruses in layers substitute in for the neo-progressive structures Rush previously used to anchor their songwriting. While it's hard not to respect these gentlemen as musicians, it's harder to give this album the response that previous works elicited.
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