1/25/24: The Enemy Within
Don't give into security under pressure..
I'm not giving into security under pressure;
I'm not missing out on the promise of adventure.
I'm not giving up on implausible dreams.
Experience to extremes.
Over the next four days, I’ll highlight the four songs in the “Fear” trilogy. (Yes, I know what I just wrote.) We’ll go in consecutive order of their appearance in the trilogy, not when they were written or released. Part 1, “The Enemy Within,” was actually second-to-last to be written and released.
“The Enemy Within” is off the excellent Grace Under Pressure, a concept-ish album about courage and the many forms it takes.
This particular song focuses on our perception of fear: That is, what we imagine to be threats, such as strangers on the street or shadows outside our windows. We don’t always have proof that these unknown things mean us harm, but our perceptions are what make them terrifying to us. Essentially, the enemy is being invented from within ourselves, and it manifests in visceral panic, such as that “po-po-pounding” in our temples (to use a line from the song).
The question then is whether or not you let your perceived fears of the unknown hold you back from doing great things. And, because it’s Peart, the answer for him is: Hell no. Of course not.
There’s another way to read the song, however, and that’s within the context of the larger album.
“The Enemy Within” has almost the same tempo and beat as “Red Sector A”, which is also off Grace Under Pressure. “Red Sector A,” a haunting song about Geddy’s mother’s time in Nazi concentration camps, reflects what can happen when invented fears and perceived threats are taken to the extreme; after all, the reason ordinary Germans went along with concentration camps is because they viewed Jews as a danger. They were “giving in to security under pressure,” as the lyrics go in “The Enemy Within",” and had their fear of The Other weaponized.
Neil does some just phenomenal drum work in “The Enemy Within”; I swear each of his limbs are playing a different rhythm and tempo from all the others. The synth is so soothing that it’s easy to overlook just how much fuckin’ chaos is happening in the drum line, but I also think that’s a musical reflection of the lyrics: Even as we look calm on the surface, the heartbeat within us kicks into high gear until it’s a chaos tearing us apart.
The music video, highlighted below, is a real time capsule of the Cold War ‘80’s, with all the neon lights and deeply unfortunate hair choices that entails. (Geddy gets a lot of flak for his shaggy mullet but is that a rat tail I spy on Neil’s neck?) That said, “The Enemy Within” still possesses a timeless quality. I don’t know what it says about the state of our world that the line “Is it revolution or just resistance?” could still feel so darn applicable.
I didn’t realize I had so much to say about “The Enemy Within” until I sat down to write this post. Man, Grace Under Pressure really is fantastic.
I’m glad you posted a note about this one. It’s definitely one of my favorite Rush songs of all time. It was one of those songs that hits that sweet spot of them finding the perfect blend of their more complex, proggy sound, and their love of New wave elements.
I think Grace under pressure has some of their best songs, I just found the original production was mixed with too high-end. The remastered version is so much better.
I’m all for change, but I do wonder what it would’ve sounded like if Terry Brown was kept on as Producer for this one.
A great track from an album that I rate very very highly. You really are going ‘all in’ on this project and really appreciate the way you are going about it. There is a really great book called The Chimp Paradox and it goes into some length about what it is that holds us back from achieving things and the part of our brain that is responsible for this - Amygdala - Fight, flight, freeze. Anyhoo...I must confess to only having seen Rush once and really wanted to see them on this tour but I would have to wait until Hold Your Fire in 1988 before they would tour Europe again. I literally just got into Rush after they toured England in 1983 with Signals. A 5 year wait because they did not come here for Grace Under Pressure and Power Windows tours😡😕. Neil really does go about his business ‘the Peart Way’ on this track as you rightly point out. That scratch riff from Alex during the verses gives it something different and energises the song which is the sound Andy Summers of The Police used often..probably 100% of the time in fact!. At the end Alex goes all out on the riff to see the song to its conclusion. There are better songs on the album (Afterimage my favourite) but, nevertheless, it’s a song that really keeps the momentum going and this album easily in my top 3.