Readers' Poll: Your Favorite Prog Rock Albums of All Time

In many ways, Hemispheres was the final album in a major chapter of Rush's career. It was their last release of the Seventies, and their last LP that's unambiguously prog. Amazingly brilliant and complex works like "La Villa Strangiato" showed they had really mastered their craft, and they felt it was time to move on. The band made a big stylistic shift on their next LP, 1980's Permanent Waves, which made them many new fans, but there's a certain contingent who see Hemispheres as Rush at their absolute peak. Still, the fact that the subtitle of "La Villa Strangiato" is "an exercise in self-indulgence" shows that Rush had grown a bit weary of the formula by this point and was ready for something new.