10 Underrated Hard Rock Songs Of The '70s
2. By-Tor And The Snow Dog - Rush
At the start of their career, Rush were dodging criticism for being copycats left and right. With their first record being centered around bluesy riffs and Geddy Lee's high-end voice, there were plenty of listeners just trying to discount them as just another group trying to ride the coattails of Led Zeppelin. However, that all changed once you got into Fly By Night.
As drummer Neil Peart entered the picture, the songs that these guys would start writing were a whole lot more adventurous than they had been before, culminating in their first epic in By-Tor and the Snow Dog. The first in the Rush catalog to be a narrative from beginning to end, the lyrics tell a tale of a warrior and a Snow Dog having a duel in the middle of the Arctic Tundra. Given that this was their 2nd record, there is still a lot of impressive musicianship on display, as everyone performs in lock step with each other to create the sensation of a war-like environment.
Though the label were originally turned off by this longwinded exercise, this was just the start of many great things to come, as the group went even more conceptual on albums like A Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres. While it might seem a bit primitive by Rush standards nowadays, By-Tor and the Snow Dog deserves its just praise for being the one epic that started it all for these prog titans.