Greetings Daren!
I agree.
Personally I can live with a little bit of loudness push because I get what the engineers are trying to accomplish with that but some albums are just way over the top.
With rock music, I find that it's been part of the deal for a few decades, and there are ways to compensate for it on the listening end. But with this particular Rush
album, it was beyond comprehension because it was so bad. As many a Rush fan will know, they've had a certain adherence to well engineered sound quality over the years and it
can probably be characterized as an essential aspect to their artistic genius - or at least their artistic goal - album to album. Vapor Trails (originally) had a
pseudo grunge presentation in its cranked character and one could have easily thought, well, that's what they wanted this time around. Admittedly though,
the band has explained it actually wasn't what they wanted and hence why they endeavored to redo the project. When you hear all the detail, the expansion and the layers of the remix,
nearly every song takes on a whole new life. I'm totally serious when I say that to my ears, the original VT sounds like it was recorded in a walk-in closet and the remix
sounds like it recorded in Abbey Road studios, with someone like Alan Parsons on the mix board. Since it's original release, I only liked a total of 4 tracks off the album and even then, I
found myself always cringing from the sibilance and crush. Today I find myself liking damn near the entire album because again, a big chunk of the songs sound completely different.
I'm a firm believer now that remastering can be good but a proper REMIX - artist sanctioned - is where it's at.
I'm sure many of us in the audiosphere have at least an album or two
we'd like to see get the Royal Remix treatment...and for me, albeit a long time coming, Vapor Trails delivers on that wish.