Nightmare Fuel / Rush (Band)

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• "Red Sector A". It's based on Geddy's mother's experience as a Holocaust survivor, and it's just as nightmarish as you'd expect. It's even worse in the live show:
  Shouting guards and smoking guns
  (BANG)
  Will cut down the unlucky ones
• On the topic of the live show, from 2002 onward, the song is accompanied by a video of a bunch of deformed figures doing an eerie tribal dance behind a red backdrop. At times the video will go black and flash to show they have eerie, demonic faces.
• Really, the entirety of Grace Under Pressure. The whole album has a rather cold feel to its production, and there's quite a few instances of Lyrical Dissonance, since the album takes a more reggae/ska approach to its musical direction. The aforementioned "Red Sector A" is the crown jewel of the album's nightmare fuel, though.
• "ATTENTION ALL PLANETS OF THE SOLAR FEDERATION. ATTENTION ALL PLANETS OF THE SOLAR FEDERATION. ATTENTION ALL PLANETS OF THE SOLAR FEDERATION. WE HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL. WE HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL. WE HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL."
• When you think about it, the entire concept of 2112 is nightmarish. A society in which the tyrannical government controls EVERYTHING and no one is allowed to be any different from anyone else and creativity is discouraged to the point that the government crushes a prodigy's beloved guitar to pieces beneath their feet right in front of him and drives him to suicide! Ditto BU2B, which sounds like your average "God isn't real" song, but when you think about it, is scary: a population brainwashed into believing that whatever happens is what's best for them no matter what. All is for the best, indeed.
• "Cygnus X-1", a song about a space explorer sacrificing himself to a black hole. His success leads to arguably the pinnacle of Geddy's screaming; considering the events, these are screams of agony and pleasure all at the same time as "every nerve is...TORN APAAAART...". (His screaming is so intense at this point that it almost sounds like he's actually being torn apart.) And that leaves just Alex's guitar and an ominous pulse fading out.
  • To make it less horrifying though, the explorer turns out to be OK, and eventually becomes a god.
  • When the explorer reappears in Olympus in "Book II: Circumstances", you hear random samples of the original track overlaid eerie synth patches and thunderstorms as the Gods war with each other.
• "Territories" is about how countries will shoot people down if they disagree with their views.
  "They shoot without shame
  in the name of a piece of dirt
  for a change of accent
  or the colour of your shirt"
• "Natural Science", about how the world is being destroyed by technology. It keeps going back and forth between tempos and has major Mood Whiplash, and ends with what sounds like a tsunami forming.
• In the video "Distant Early Warning", one of the first things we see is a melting face.
• You probably wouldn't believe it, from the calm, collected nature of the music but the lyrics to "The Pass" are truly terrifying. The lyrics focus on a parent watching his child succumb to the effects of depression, and possibly even being Driven to Suicide. Geddy's delivery of the line "Christ, what have you done" can make someone sick, especially as all 3 members of the band had become parents by then. Not helping is that Neil wrote the lyrics out of anger after seeing youth suicide being romanticized so frequently. Who can blame him.

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