As overblown as drummer Neil Peart’s narrative might seem on paper, the musical accompaniment is some of the most tasteful and well-paced of Rush’s early career: Moody melodic passages break up the song’s mathy breakdowns, triumphant verses and ecstatic shredding from guitarist Alex Lifeson, and acoustic coda “The Sphere (A Kind of Dream)” brings the whole thing to a beautifully serene close. “Book I” left off with a poor space traveler getting sucked into a black hole here, improbably, he emerges as a “God of Balance,” mediating between Apollo and Dionysus in a struggle for the soul of mankind. Much as with 2112, the album’s centerpiece is its multipart Side One suite, “Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres,” a sequel to the final track from 1977’s A Farewell to Kings. The whole thing comes packaged in a fresh design by longtime Rush collaborator and original Hemispheres co–art director Hugh Syme that riffs on the album’s quintessentially over-the-top cover art showing a nude man standing atop a giant brain. This expanded 40th anniversary reissue keeps the focus on the album itself, included on both CD and LP, while adding illuminating context in the form of a contemporary live set, a new 5.1 surround-sound mix on Blu-ray, extensive liner notes featuring new band interviews and candid session photos, and replicas of a tour-program and other memorabilia from the period. If 1976’s 2112 was the band’s fiery eureka moment, Hemispheres - Rush’s sixth LP, released in October 1978 - was a mature masterpiece. This phase lasted just three short years but produced some of the greatest-ever examples of the style.

As Geddy Lee put it in a recent Rolling Stone interview, Rush’s Hemispheres signified “the end of a thing.” That thing was the band’s high-prog period, marked by grandiose, album-side–filling tracks.

Rush 2112 remastered rar