Blog author: Alex Stojanovic First of all, I meant to post this yesterday, but I forgot because I got so busy. Well, nothing wrong with being a day late I guess. Every year, we celebrate benchmarks and anniversaries of certain events and albums in music history. This year in 2016, people are looking back at albums that were released in 1976, 1986, 1996 and 2006. |
All those years produced some amazing albums, but I'd like to step back to 1996 and put the spotlight on an album that I feel hasn't gotten the respect or credit it deserves, and that is Rush's Test For Echo. Truly a great album, in fact, one of the most underrated Rush albums of all time. The album turned 20 yesterday.
This was the album that may have been Rush's last album back then considering the events that happened following the conclusion of the tour for the album in 1997 with the loss of Neil Peart's daughter and later on his wife, until they returned in 2002 with Vapor Trails. "Resist" may be the first track that comes to mind when you think of this album because Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson performed an acoustic version of the song on the Vapor Trails and R30 tours, but how could you forget about tracks like the title track, "Driven", "Half The World", "Time & Motion", "Totem", "Virtuality" and "Limbo", just brilliant stuff.
I remember when I was 11 years old, and already a big Rush fan, I was hounding my dad for us to go to the store and pick up this record. I knew he was getting tired of it, so one day we went to the store and picked it up and it didn't leave the stereo in my room for a while. It blows my mind that in every top 10 or 20 list of the best rock albums of 1996, this album is never mentioned. Definitely check this album out if you haven't yet. A great album that is so criminally underrated with so many great songs.
This was the album that may have been Rush's last album back then considering the events that happened following the conclusion of the tour for the album in 1997 with the loss of Neil Peart's daughter and later on his wife, until they returned in 2002 with Vapor Trails. "Resist" may be the first track that comes to mind when you think of this album because Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson performed an acoustic version of the song on the Vapor Trails and R30 tours, but how could you forget about tracks like the title track, "Driven", "Half The World", "Time & Motion", "Totem", "Virtuality" and "Limbo", just brilliant stuff.
I remember when I was 11 years old, and already a big Rush fan, I was hounding my dad for us to go to the store and pick up this record. I knew he was getting tired of it, so one day we went to the store and picked it up and it didn't leave the stereo in my room for a while. It blows my mind that in every top 10 or 20 list of the best rock albums of 1996, this album is never mentioned. Definitely check this album out if you haven't yet. A great album that is so criminally underrated with so many great songs.