Caress Of Steel (studio album) by Rush

The classic Rush sound can be heard developing on this album, 'Lakeside Park' could happily have sat on 2121 or Farewell to Kings and is actually my favourite track. 'The Necromancer' is my other top track, very progressive in its build up and certainly feels like a journey to some other realm, with some great lead guitar soloing over the driving rhythm section.

Moving into full-on progressive. Still good but not their strongest

From Fischman 12/14/2016 22:22

This was a very ambitious project and Rush learned a lot from it, as evidenced by the follow up, the unbeatable '2112.' Nevertheless, this one is excellent in its own right.

With the exception of I Think I'm Going Bald, this album is great throughout. Definitely underrated.

From souplipton 06/10/2016 03:42

Caress of Steel is Rush's most underrated album. Coming right before their breakout album 2112, this album features Rush playing somewhat harder rock, while still featuring their mostly fantasy and philosophically influenced songwriting. "Bastille Day" is one of Rush's best songs, and "I Think I'm Going Bald" and "Lakeside Park" are pretty good songs. That brings us to the album's longer, multi-part songs. "The Fountain of Lamneth" has its ups and downs, but is a good song, while "The Necromancer" is of their best multi-part songs. A personal favourite of mine, "The Necromancer" elevates this alvum to their first great work in my opinion.

Best Track: Bastille Day

According to the Rush documentry, Caress was almost the end of the band.........how sad would that have been

This album may be a little underrated, but I don't think it's one of Rush's best. Still, it's an important release because it shows a band stretching their prog rock wings. We have true epics for the first time in the Rush catalog ("By Tor and the Snow Dog" from FBN was like a mini epic) in the form of "The Necromancer" and "The Fountain of Lamneth". Sadly, Necromancer is extremely uneven (even boring during the first half), and the three shorter tracks are inconsistent. "Bastille Day" is a great rocker through and through, but "I Think I'm Going Bald" is poor and "Lakeside Park" is kind of bland except for the guitar solos.

Overall it's a little above average, thanks to the ball-crunching "Bastille Day" and sweeping "The Fountain of Lamneth". Probably somewhere in the back half of my top 100 albums of the 70s...and it might just crack my top 10 albums of '75.