RUSH 2112 Gatefold Vinyl LP 1976 Mercury Records SRM11079
It can fairly, though arguably, claim to be the first real Heavy Metal album. The sonic mud of Black Sabbath, the instrumental incompetence of the band and the drugged-out babble of Ozzie's lyrics made "Sabbath" incapable of being anything other than something to annoy parents and neighbors with.
"2112" is the first real achievement of the second generation of hard rock and Rush is the band that made that second generation main stream.
The influence of the pseudo-Nietzchean philospher Ayn Rand on Neil Peart's lyrics--as opposed to his life--has been way over blown. Peart is a far deeper thinker than Rand ever was and far better writer than she was as well. Where as Rand spewed out gigantic books filled with one-dimensional characters embalmed in endless pages of incomprehensible polysyllabic babble, "2112"--the side long piece--presents a comprehensible dystopic future. A future where, as under the Soviet Union, artistic expression is as tightly controlled as political expression. The intelligent tyrants always understand that controlling art is as much a tool of controlling the masses as control of the police and the military. The horizons of acceptable expression must be guided through the channels of the party or the religious dogma.