Hold Your Fire is the twelfth studio album by Canadian progressive rock band Rush, released on September 8, 1987. It was recorded at The Manor Studio in Oxfordshire, Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey, AIR Studios in Montserrat and McClear Place in Toronto. Hold Your Fire was the last Rush studio album released outside Canada by PolyGram/Mercury. 'Til Tuesday bassist and vocalist Aimee Mann contributed vocals to "Time Stand Still", and appeared in the Zbigniew Rybczyński-directed video.
The album was not as commercially successful as most of the band's releases of the 1980s, peaking at number 13 on the Billboard charts, the lowest chart peak for a Rush album since 1978's Hemispheres. Neil Peart began writing lyrics in a cottage in early September. Meanwhile, Geddy Lee started to compose on his keyboard setup controlled on a Macintosh computer using software called Digital Performer, In an afternoon later that month, Peart and Lee together showed what they had been working on, and also discussed a few lyrical ideas they weren't able to write on paper, which would be included in "Mission," "Open Secrets" and "Turn the Page."
The group started writing sessions in Elora Sound Studio, Ontario on September 27, 1986. were taped using an analog tape recorder, later converted into a digital tape. Recording was finished by April 24,
Lee played a Wal bass guitar for Hold Your Fire, as well as being vocalist and keyboardist. A backward sample of Aimee Mann's vocals from another track is used at the end of the song. In a 2009 interview with Blender, Lee expressed regret in including "Tai Shan" on the album, calling it an "error" and saying "we should have known better." Lifeson called the song "a little corny" in a 2012 interview with Total Guitar. Lifeson, in 2016, considered "Tai Shan" and "Panacea" the worst songs Rush ever recorded.
Music
Hold Your Fire has been categorized as new wave, heavy metal/hard rock, stadium progressive rock, The songs are driven by bass guitar that is a mixture of punchy and melodic. Although there are moments of distorted, extreme leads, Lifeson's electric guitar work on the album is mainly textural, with Steel-string acoustic guitar serving a rhythmic role, causing a glossy overall sound.
Reception
Contemporaneous
Music publications such as Metal Hammer, Kerrang! and Sounds awarded Hold Your Fire perfect scores. Some appreciated the album for being more accessible to mainstream listeners and having tighter compositions than prior records. Conversely, "they are too cumbersome and distanced to be embraceable" for Guitar for the Practicing Musician. Although Hold Your Fire was certified gold in the United States shortly after its release, it failed to reach platinum status according to the RIAA, becoming the first Rush studio album to not do so since 1975's Caress of Steel.
Retrospective
For Adrien Begrand, Hold Your Fire was the best Rush album of the era starting with Signals, containing a much smoother balance between the U2/Big Country-style rock and cutting-edge electronic sounds than Power Windows.
2010s and 2020s rankings of Rush studio albums generally placed Hold Your Fire near or at the bottom. Very few put them in the middle. However, opinions towards the album, even for rankings that placed the album last, were mixed rather than outright negative. They noted their technical proficiency and self-reflective lyrics but also a lack of "dynamic punch", energy and "quirkiness" of their better albums. For the 2011 remaster, master tapes containing different mixes of Hold Your Fire were inadvertently used, with the result that the mix is noticeably different from previous releases in several places; particularly during "Mission", where string parts that were not present on the original release can be heard, and in the introduction to "Tai Shan", where wind chimes have been added. There is also a panning stereo effect on the vocals during the first pre-chorus of "Turn the Page" which is absent from the original mix.
In 2015 it was reissued after being remastered by Sean Magee at Abbey Road Studios following a direct approach by Rush to remaster their entire back catalogue.
Track listing
Personnel
Sources:
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!scope="row"|Finnish Albums (Suomen virallinen lista)
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!scope="row"|Japanese Albums (Oricon)
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Year-end charts
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|+1987 year-end chart performance for Hold Your Fire
!Chart (1987)
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Singles and chart positions
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!align="left"|Information
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|align="left"|"Time Stand Still"
- Released: October 19, 1987
- Written by: Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart
- Produced by: Peter Collins and Rush
- Chart positions: No. 3 US Mainstream Rock; number 41 UK
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|align="left"|"Force Ten"
- Written by: Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, Neil Peart and Pye Dubois
- Produced by: Peter Collins and Rush
- Chart positions: number 3 US Mainstream Rock
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