Counterparts is the fifteenth studio album by Canadian rock band Rush, released October 19, 1993, on Anthem Records.

[2][3] After the band finished touring its previous album Roll the Bones (1991) in mid-1992, the members took a break before starting work on a follow-up.

[7] Before the group started to work on the album they casually set out some goals that they wanted to achieve with it from conversations during the Roll the Bones Tour.

[8] The group agreed that rock band Primus, who opened for them on the Roll the Bones Tour, and Pearl Jam influenced them to tweak their sound further.

The group faced many technical problems which delayed the writing process to the point where Peart had a short amount of time to arrange his parts, but as Lee recalled: "He went through a massive rehearsal period; he works tremendously hard and it's incredible to witness.

[12] The writing sessions were met with increased tension between Lee and Lifeson, matters of which began on the Roll the Bones Tour over musical differences.

Among the topics he thought about were the differences between genders, the anima and animus principle devised by psychologist Carl Jung, and the good and bad regarding heroism.

[16] Lee recalled the difficulty the band had in achieving more power from some tracks with producer Rupert Hine on Roll the Bones in the studio but were able to on tour, "and I think that stuck in the back of our minds."

[16] Initially, they talked to a lot of young producers, but they soon realized that there was little to gain from someone who had worked on fewer albums than the group had released over its career, and sought someone experienced.

[8][16] Rush chose English producer Peter Collins who'd co-produced Power Windows (1985) and Hold Your Fire (1987) with the band.

"As soon as we talked we knew it would be great [...] and he agreed with the vision of what we saw; and his comments, criticizing the past couple records, sonically anyway, were very much in line with the direction we wanted to go, and we thought, 'Bingo!

'[16] Collins had different engineers in mind to work with, so a "laborious but interesting search" took place to find someone suitable that involved hearing tapes from artists worldwide.

In the end, they chose Kevin "The Caveman" Shirley for the recording; Lee said it was because of his "raw" and "natural" sound,[8] which required minimal use of reverb which was difficult for the band to get used to at first.

After a few days, Lifeson enjoyed the experience and wanted to continue recording in this manner: "You could feel the wood of the guitar vibrating against your body, and it was more susceptible to that really cool feedback, and it was your own little world; it was a little bit of an escape.

[15] Rush had difficulty in selecting the running order on Counterparts partly due to the fact that it was easier to separate the album with two sides of a vinyl.

He thought that such love lyrics had become a cliché throughout the 1980s, however, and turned to works by Jung and Camille Paglia to understand "what the modern man was supposed to be.

"[16] He then took Jung's concept of anima and animus to write about a man dominating his softer, feminine side with aggression and ambition, more typical male traits.

"[10] "Cut to the Chase" is one of the few songs on the album where Lifeson's original guide guitar solo on the demo tape was used on the final take.

[16] "Cold Fire" went through several rewrites and Lee credited Collins in helping to put the song together by highlighting the strongest sections in the previous versions.