The problem with this and a couple of other albums in this era was that they changed up too much within 4-5 minute long songs and cluttered things up too much in synths and industrial sounds. They would pull off a song here and there that wasn't too bad when it came to those things like force ten, but better yet prime mover or high water. There quality in making music and songs was great but the aforementioned just started wearing on me and I was glad when counterparts came out when they just stripped all of the over produced junk off and jammed things out along with not changing up too much which helped the songs have a better groove. Now Presto and roll the bones was imo a step in that right direction. What happened is a lot of their original head banging audience abandoned them in the mid to late 80's and many now stereotype rush as a 80's techno band which gave them a stigma but many who have done that still don't realize that rush moved away from that years ago and became much harder again.
Even the band admitted that they went a step too far with the techno crap on this album which was when they started their cycle back around to heavier more streamed lined stuff. 82 - 87 was probably their most experimental stage in which they had some bright spots while making some mistakes as they again have admitted. Hold your Fire I agree would have to either be totally rerecorded or taken beyond a remixing by just editing out most of the synths and deleting out virtually all of the industrial clutter and then replacing that stuff with guitar parts while turning up the guitar parts already there. It would be damn near a whole over haul on the album if not just better to re record from scratch. The basic idea and style was there but buried under all kinds of crap that cluttered it and caused the songs to jump around too much. Some of the songs do sound a bit better live though because alex cranks up his guitar more while improvising more guitar.
IMO these are the best two songs as far as being less cluttered, not changing up too much/more consistent, and having a heavier more evident guitar sound.
Nice review. I used to not like this album. But I enjoy it now more than ever. This & Power Windows used to me be really soft. But after all these years. I finally like both of these albums for there music & songwriting by the band
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