10 Amazing Hard Rock Concept Albums

10. Clockwork Angels - Rush

The idea of the concept album feels like it was tailor made for a band like Rush. These guys were always known for writing songs that had long sweeping narratives, so why not translate that into a full project? For their entire duration though, these Canadian icons never really bothered to go the full narrative direction for any of their records. If they were going to go conceptual though, they were going to do it right.

Adapted from a book that drummer Neil Peart was writing around the same time, Rush's swan song Clockwork Angels is one of the greatest albums of their later period, taking the bombast side of their sound and pushing it even further. With a narrative set in a steampunk world, you can feel that kind of otherworldly atmosphere from the minute that Caravan starts, as if it's the train pulling into the station before the real adventure starts. Going through the rest of the project, you can even hear bits and pieces of different characters, as well as moments that get borderline metal by Rush standards like Headlong Flight and The Anarchist.

Being a much more operatic experience, the band also made it a point to bring in as much musical threads as they could, having an orchestra used on some songs and even touring with a string section for the promotional tour for the project so that nothing was lost when translating it to the stage. Since Rush is now firmly etched in stone, this feels like the best way to wrap up their career, remembered as the masterful storytellers of prog rock.