Rush – Grace Under Pressure (180g Vinyl LP)

In 2014 UMe/Mercury reissued Rush’s self-titled debut on heavy-weight vinyl in celebration of the album’s 40th anniversary. Now in 2015, let the Rush 40 celebration continue with ’12 Months of Rush’ reissues – in chronological order – starting with 1975’s Fly By Night on LP. 

 

During the ’12 Months of Rush’ campaign all 14 of the band’s Mercury albums will be remastered on 200-gram heavy-weight vinyl at legendary Abbey Road, all from original analogue masters. All LPs will also include a digital download code for a 320kbps MP4 vinyl ripped Digital Audio album download. 

Grace Under Pressure is the band’s tenth studio recording, released in April of 1984. It was recorded at Le Studio, like so many other Rush classics. The band originally approached producer Steve Lillywhite to record Grace Under Pressure, but he went on to work on other projects so Rush produced the album themselves, with assistance from Peter Henderson, who had previously worked with Supertramp, Split Enz, Frank Zappa, and King Crimson.

 

Largely considered one of the band’s darkest albums, Grace Under Pressure was influenced by the growing tensions in the Cold War in the 1980s. The album’s running theme is “pressure” and how humans act under the influence of it. Despite the dark themes of the record, the band balances out the tension by incorporating various musical influences into the mix including reggae.