Vapor Trails by Rush

Vapor Trails, Rush's seventeenth studio album, landed on Anthem Records on May 14, 2002, and after the longest gap of their career it's a wonder it exists at all. Once the Test for Echo tour wound up in July 1997, drummer and lyricist Neil Peart lost his daughter and then his wife, and for a long stretch nobody knew whether the band would carry on. Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Peart finally regrouped in January 2001 and worked on the record until December, co-producing with Paul Northfield.

What came out is a wall of sound with no keyboards anywhere, for the first time since Caress of Steel: guitars, bass and drums stacked layer on layer, Peart's drums hitting like hail. The lead single, "One Little Victory", went to 10 on the Mainstream Rock chart. The band never made peace with how it sounded, and in 2013 David Bottrill remixed the whole album as Vapor Trails Remixed.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.