Irenicus

Problem is, the riffs are mostly not really crushing and balls-to-the-wall, but rather dull and plodding.

Oh god, these delusional fans... what drugs do they take? Might I have some please? But as I see there are still enough sane people. Agreed with all of this. Clockwork Angels is easily the most overrated newer album by any old band that I encountered. It has some quite good songs yeah (like even RTB, T4E or CP), but that's it and the production is just not good. Plus where is all the great lead guitar work Alex always had? All the great melodies? Now it's just boring chords and poppy choruses. Hopefully the next album will be better. I don't want this great band to go down like this...

Because it sucks and the band is probably aware of that.

Presto is indeed a very good album. Definitely better than Hold Your Fire, Roll the Bones, Counterparts, Test for Echo, Snakes & Arrows and Clockwork Angels. I still don't love its production, but it's still better than any later production except Counterparts. I love the musical diversity and often funky playing. They manage to be catchy and hooky, but still not too poppy or simple. Just Superconductor kinda sucks (too repetitive) and Hand Over Fist is also rather boring.

Roll the Bones.

edit wrong thread, please delete

Totally! Why? Simply because it sounds much, much better. No muddy, brickwalled, clipped sound anymore. A relief for the ears. Plus the mix it's much better since you hear the instruments more clearly and differentiated, it has more dynamics. And it's an amazing album musically, no matter what anyone says. Far better than the highly overrated Clockwork Angels or borefest Counterparts. It truly was the creative rebirth of the band.

I meant that, if you really want to (legally) get the bonus material, you are forced to buy this boxset. Big difference, because no other compilation/boxset ever had so much previously unreleased bonus material that you won't be able to get seperately (at least I highly doubt they would release such odd vault stuff seperately). In fact, the only other case I can think of are the 2 VT remixes on Retrospective 3, but that's just 2 tracks and a single CD. Plus you can download those seperately from iTunes if you want. So yeah, a total cash grab. They know that most (or at least big part) of the fans want to have such rare old live stuff.

Say what you want, but this is definitely a complete cash grab. Basically forcing fans to buy all those live releases AGAIN, just to get this rare bonus stuff. And I'm sure it won't be cheap. Also... Are they actually implying that their label guys decide whether they tour or not? I hope it's just their weird sense of humour again...

Exactly.

Um no need to imagine, just listen to Counterparts or Test for Echo...

Master of Disguise, hehe

Band musicians attempting to produce (no matter in which aspect) without any experience/knowledge is obviously always a bad thing. One good example is also Iron Maiden's Steve Harris who, more or less, controlled production ever since their old, legendary, longterm producer Martin Birch left the chair in 1992. His first resulsts (he pretty much was the producer back then, with just some engineer backup) were absolutely disastrous. Then their new producer Kevin Shirley joined in 2000 and it was surely an improvement, but went downhill with every following album, because Steve's degree of production control probably increased more and more. Interestingly Kevin Shirley's other productions aside of Iron Maiden are far better, so it can't really be his fault, except that he is okay to let a famous musician ruin his name. So yeah, someone should have the guts to tell these guys "Dude, respect and all for your talent as a musician and songwriter, but you don't have a single fu**ing clue about production, so please keep away from it." Too bad nobody would dare to. Just bring back Terry Brown for fu**s sake... just for one last album, so they can actually sound good once again.

Deutschland, eh? What part? North Rhine-Westphalia, more precisely in the Lower Rhine region very close to the Dutch border.

Entre Nous. But Different Strings is pretty much as amazing.

Sorry, but I just can't choose... too many cringeworthy moments.

La Villa Strangiato, hands down their best instrumental.

Fly by Night, no doubt. Better songwriting (except Rivendell & title track) and better playing in general (not just the drumming but of course that's the obvious huge improvement).

Both are perfect masterpieces with not any single bit I would change, but I chose PeW mainly because of Jacob's Ladder and Natural Science. I'm just a sucker for epics. And I guess I also prefer the somewhat more experimental style of the album. MP seems more straightforward to me mostly.

Hemispheres since I'm not a fan of Cinderella Man while Hemispheres is simply perfection.

Caress of Steel. Never cared much for side two of 2112, I find none of the songs more than just good. COS has 2 oustanding epics plus a great opener, a pretty good mellow tune and a decent rocker with I Think I'm Going Bald, which is only hated so much because people take the tongue-in-cheek lyrics too seriously. I really don't see how Lessons or much of Fly by Night (not to speak of the debut) is much better than that song.

P/G for me. I always thought the 2nd half of Power Windows didn't quite match up to the first, although still quite good. While P/G has only one song (Red Lenses) I don't like as much as the rest.

Easily Vapor Trails, still their best album since Power Windows. S&A is pretty good, but somehow got boring rather quickly, probably because most songs are too similar and too mellow. Only Far Cry and the Instrumentals really stand out. VT isn't perfect, but the instrumental work is simply the most creative and exciting they have done in a long time. And all the songs are at least good.

This poll must be a joke, right? Clockwork Angels isn't even remotely close to being a competition for Hemispheres. CA is easily in the bottom 5 of worst Rush albums; only RTB, CP and T4E are worse and that's not exactly saying much. Sure, it has a few good songs, but they don't really save it.

Voted for The Garden, but CA is incredibly overrated as a whole. Also pretty much any Counterparts song since that album is also much overrated.