Snakes & Arrows is the eighteenth studio album by Canadian rock band Rush, released on May 1, 2007 by Anthem Records. After their R30: 30th Anniversary Tour ended in October 2004, the band took a one-year break; during the break, they agreed to start work on a follow-up in January 2006. The album was recorded in five weeks with co-producer Nick Raskulinecz, a fan of the group who was praised by each member for his approach and technique. It contains three instrumental tracks, the most on any Rush album.

Snakes & Arrows was released on CD and a limited edition double LP (5,000 copies) and Music Video Interactive format (25,000 copies). It peaked at No. 3 in Canada and the United States and in September 2007, was certified gold in Canada. Rush were nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance for "Malignant Narcissism". Snakes & Arrows was named one of Classic Rock's ten essential progressive rock albums of the decade. It was reissued and remastered in 2013 as a part of The Studio Albums 1989–2007 box set. In 2016, it was reissued after being remastered by Sean Magee at Abbey Road Studios following a direct approach by Rush to remaster their entire back catalogue.

In October 2004, Rush finished their R30: 30th Anniversary Tour and began a year-long break in activity. During this time they were involved in the R30: 30th Anniversary World Tour DVD, interviews for which revealed their intention to start on a new studio album in early 2006, their first of new material since Vapor Trails (2002). The group felt charged up having recorded their covers EP Feedback (2004), which saw them play simple and direct songs and record it live as opposed to their own more thought-out and complex music. Such an approach was adopted for Snakes & Arrows.

Work on the album began in January 2006 and the band members adopted their usual writing method of Lee and Lifeson jamming on new musical ideas while Peart works alone on the lyrics. Rather than work in the same facility, this time Lee and Lifeson worked out of their home studios in Toronto and gradually moulded their ideas into arranged songs using a click track as a guide drum part. They worked a three-day week, starting around noon until around 5 p.m. Peart, who'd relocated to southern California in 2000, worked from home and collaborated with his bandmates online and travelled to Toronto and New York throughout the writing and recording phases. Lifeson said that the group did more pre-production work than before and that Lee and himself adopted a more casual and relaxed approach to writing.

Lifeson had met guitarist David Gilmour during Gilmour's tour stop in Toronto who inspired him to write on an acoustic guitar as an indicator of how strong a tune is. Gilmour is thanked in the liner notes of Snakes & Arrows. During the writing sessions, Peart experimented with new equipment such as the Roland V-Drum TD-20, a kit which he used on the album to trigger samples. Much of the album is written in a 3/4 time signature. A writer for the National Post compared much of the material to that of Hemispheres (1978) with the "unexpected, angular chord changes". Peart was inspired to write lyrics on various themes including faith, fear, the association of religion and war, hope and despair, and the religious billboards he saw on his motorcycle journey across the United States which he detailed in his fourth book Roadshow: Landscape with Drums – A Concert Tour by Motorcycle (2006), written during the R30 tour. He was also inspired by Robert Frost's epitaph: "I had a lover's quarrel with the world" and used lyrical ideas that he had initially put down 15 years prior.

In March 2006, Lee and Lifeson had completed rough versions of six tracks and played them to Peart at his house in Quebec. Peart said he would "never forget first hearing the initial few songs for this album. It is always a thrill to hear my words sung for the first time [...] there's a sense of affirmation in knowing that Geddy found those words worth singing." Peart was particularly excited upon hearing "Bravest Face" and "The Way the Wind Blows" due to their fresh sound and how different they were from previous Rush songs. He picked "spiritual" as the word that best described the essence of the songs presented to him. Snakes & Arrows features three instrumentals, the most of any Rush album. In May 2006, the three moved into Cherry Beach Sound in Toronto for one month to develop the songs and by early June, they had eight tracks they were happy with. After a summer break, they resumed work in September and "kept working until it was finished."

Peart came up with the album's title as he worked on the lyrics to "Armor and Sword." He'd researched several sources, including the ancient Indian board game leela, a precursor to the modern children's game snakes and ladders, and the quote "slings and arrows" from the Shakespeare play Hamlet. By the time the album was being mixed, the title was agreed upon. Peart wrote that the title was chosen to "describe the 'good' kind of faith as being armor, while the 'bad' kind of faith is a sword". He would always check a master list at a record shop to see if an album title had been used by another band, but this time he searched online and found out about the leela game which had also been called "the game of snakes and arrows." Peart then found a gameboard painted by Harish Johari which he presented to Lee and Lifeson; the three agreed to make it the front cover and worked with their longtime cover designer Hugh Syme to incorporate it into the sleeve layout.

The main recording sessions took place across 36 days in November and December 2006 at Allaire Studios within Glen Tonche, an estate set upon Mount Tonch in the Catskill Mountains, New York. Peart had worked at the studio for his instructional DVD Anatomy of a Drum Solo and convinced Lee and Lifeson to record there over Toronto. The band had initially planned to stay at Allaire for two weeks to record the drums and some bass before returning to Toronto and recording the guitars at Lifeson's home studio, but the positive surroundings, available equipment, and productive sessions led to their stay extended by four weeks, during which the album was completed there. The band would start around 10 a.m. and work until late and would enter the studio at any time if the urge was strong enough, including one session which took place at 2 a.m. Additional recording was done at Grandmaster Recorders in Los Angeles. The album was recorded using Pro Tools software.