10 Hard Rock Albums MUCH Better Than You Remember

Most people remember Rush nowadays as one of the forerunners of the prog rock movement.

Compared to their fellow acts like Yes or Genesis, this power trio from Canada brought a lot more muscle to the genre, with some of the most episodic songs ever to be associated with the term 'rock.' On the other hand, the concept of long songs like this tend to be a tough sell when you're just starting.

Being one of their first fully-fledged prog outings, Caress of Steel remains the black sheep of Rush's catalog. Though they were able to recover from it on their opus 2112, this ended up being the biggest bomb of the group's career, with people not really understanding the concept of the longer songs just yet.

Aside from the typical backlash though, this album is actually an engaging listen from front to back, starting off with an amazing rock classic on Bastille Day and even having wistful ballads like Lakeside Park.

Even the longer songs like the Fountain of Lamneth do have some engaging material if you look for it, but that wasn't enough to save it from obscurity. Throughout their tour for this album, the band themselves took to calling their run of dates the Down the Tubes tour because they thought they would be dropped by their label. While Rush can certainly do better than this on later albums, Caress of Steel is a damn fine record from the early stages of prog rock.