Rush, A New Drummer, and Some Hard Truths
Rush, A New Drummer, and Some Hard Truths Posted March 30, 2026 I know I’ll get backlash for this… but here it goes. I just listened to Rush perform with their new drummer Anika Nilles , and I’ve got to be real about what I heard. The first thing that stood out to me was the bass drum timing. It felt off. Not wildly off, but enough that if you know these songs—if you’ve lived with them—you feel it. Instead of that locked-in, accented pulse, it came across more like a “boom boom tap” jam feel. And that’s the core of it. Anika is a jam-style player. A free-flowing drummer. Someone who can stretch time, pull it back, breathe with the band in a live setting. That’s a gift—and in most bands, it’s exactly what you want. But Rush is not most bands. Rush songs are architectural. They’re built, not just played. Precision isn’t optional—it’s the foundation. You can’t really “wing” a Rush song, and at moments during that Juno Awards performance, it felt like that’s what was happen...
