Snakes & Arrows by Rush

Snakes & Arrows, Rush's 18th studio album, landed on May 1, 2007, and it finds the Canadian power trio sounding hungrier than a band nearly four decades in has any right to. After the R30 anniversary tour wrapped in October 2004 they took a year off, then got back to work in January 2006 with co-producer Nick Raskulinecz, a fan of the band whose methods won praise from all three members. The whole record was cut in five weeks.

It's a guitar record first: Alex Lifeson's riffs ring and chime, Geddy Lee's bass growls underneath, and Neil Peart attacks his kit with a watchmaker's precision. "Far Cry" charges out hard. The band also let their fingers do the talking on three instrumentals, the most on any Rush album, and one of them, "Malignant Narcissism", earned a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Classic Rock later counted it among the decade's ten essential progressive rock albums.

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