Rush
Test For Echo

THE REVIEW

The second episode of the "metallic trip" of the 90s Rush is this "Test for echo." It is the natural continuation of the previous "Counterparts," although the average level of the tracks present is slightly lower.

The beginning, with the track that gives the album its title, does not seem to be one of the most successful: "pushed" riffs, alternated with arpeggiated pauses (far from those magical ones of the 70s), and Geddy Lee's vocal line that, in singing verses of a length not easily manageable, ends up being flat and not very fluent. The following "Driven" is decidedly preferable, introduced by the usual ultra-heavy riff typical of this phase of their career, but more immediate and engaging, with well-suited acoustic breaks. The next two pieces "Half the world" and "The color of right" are pleasant but surely will not go down in history. On a completely different note, "Time and motion," the track that most reminds us of the classic Rush: a dark and mysterious atmosphere, with a musical structure I could describe as "a progressive rock suite synthesized in five minutes". Great piece.

Beautiful airy melodic openings (in a context of pure hard rock) of "Totem," while "Dog years" is practically heavy metal, but of good quality. The following "Virtuality" instead candidates itself as one of the worst tracks ever by Rush: it seems even impossible that the same authors of "Red Barchetta" wrote it. It widely recovers with the three final pieces: the first "Resist" is a beautiful melodic track (but not a true ballad) that evokes boundless spaces, "Limbo" is an atypical instrumental, with glimpses of solemn keyboards, accelerations, and sudden stops highlighted by Lifeson's guitar harmonics, and finally "Carve away the stone" powerful and refined at the same time.

"Test for echo" taken in itself is a good quality album, to be appreciated, however, after many listens. The first time I listened to it I would have thrown it out the window, but it's understandable, after all, I discovered them in 1981 with "Moving pictures." It's like making love for the first time with Miss Universe; it's clear that all the subsequent ones "suffer the comparison."