Rush went through some re configurations between 1968 and 1974, achieving their current form when Neil Peart replaced original drummer John Rutsey in July 1974, two weeks before the group's first U.S. tour. Rush, over the years, have been able to continually renew their style. Rush's discography can be divided into a number of five cycles, each cycle usually retains certain characteristics of style that slowly change into the new cycle. The first is oriented to hard rock with Led Zeppelin influences and ends with a live album, "All The World's a Stage" (1976). The second cycle starts with "A Farewell to Kings" (1977), it's oriented to progeressive rock and ends with one of their finest live, "Exit...Stage Left" (1981). The third opens with "Signals" (1982) and it's oriented to a synth pop rock with a marked use of synthesizers. It ends with their third live album, "A Show of Hands" (1988). The fourth cycle starts with "Presto" (1990). Rush are close to a rock where the guitars back as protagonists and the same characteristics are in the album "Roll the Bones" (1991). After this album, Rush opened to a "modern" hard rock closing their fourth cycle with "Test for Echo" (1996) and with the triple live album "Different Stages" (1999). It's a difficult period for the band and especially for the drummer and lyricist Neil Peart whose life is marked by a double family tragedy; in 1997 his daughter died in a car accident and in 1998 his wife Jacqueline died of cancer. All this suggests also a possible disbanded, instead the band returns in 2002 with a heavy album "Vapor Trails", made of a dark hard rock arranged and produced to give a sound dirty and direct. After the 2003 live album "Rush in Rio" and the covers album "Feedback" (2004), Rush published "Snakes & Arrows" (2007), followed by "Snakes & Arrows Live". "Snakes & Arrows" again reveals all the capability and the powerful of the band movings toward to a progressive rock-metal with also only instrumental songs.