Thirty-three years into its recording career, Canadian hard-rock trio Rush is finding it easier to make music together. "You can argue that we don't have much to prove at this point," guitarist Alex Lifeson says. "We're in our 50s now. Geddy [Lee] and I have been doing it 40 years, as a band with Neil [Peart] for 33 years.

"But this was maybe the most fun record I think we've ever made. It just feels different somehow. It's very positive, very forward, all fresh and new to us for some reason." He's referring to "Snakes & Arrows," which comes out May 1 on Anthem/Atlantic and as an expanded set with a 43-minute video on June 5. It's Rush's first set of all-new material since 2002's "Vapor Trails." But unlike the six-year hiatus before that album, the trio has been busy in the intervening years. It has toured twice, released a covers EP, "Feedback," a live album and two concert DVDs.

Rush started work on "Snakes & Arrows" in early 2006, when Lee and Lifeson, who reside two blocks away from each other in Toronto, began working on new music at Lee's house, with lyrics supplied by Peart from California. The spirit of the project, Lee says, was inspired by "Feedback," which "put us in touch with being kids again. I think we came into ["Snakes & Arrows"] with a real nice mental attitude."

"There's a lot of playing on this record," Lifeson says. "To me it's got our whole history in it, somehow. It's got little bits of the way we wrote songs in the past, the kind of chords we might have used, but not in a nostalgic kind of way."