Anika Nilles takes Toronto | Reviews are in
Rush played four sold-out hometown shows with Anika Nilles behind the kit. Here is what the critics who were actually in the room made of her.
Rush came home this month. Four nights at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto — their first shows in the city since 2015, and the first anywhere since Neil Peart died in 2020.
Behind the kit: Anika Nilles.
We were not there. So rather than pretend otherwise, here is what the people who were in the room have written — and what it tells you about how the hardest gig in drumming is going.
What the reviews said
Exclaim! did not hedge. Their reviewer called her “a goddamn powerhouse; a force, a gale, a torrent, an avalanche of fills and rides and rhythms.”
That is not the language of a critic being polite about a stand-in.
MetalTalk landed in the same place, describing her as an absolute rockstar on stage and saying her playing showed she belongs in the band both technically and spiritually. Their reviewer noted that each roll or fill drew a roar from the crowd — which, given who used to sit there, is the detail that matters most.
Billboard Canada covered the Tuesday show, where the band played Moving Pictures in full alongside “Xanadu”, “2112”, “Closer to the Heart” and “Time Stand Still”.
And Geddy Lee, by several accounts, acknowledged Peart from the stage and then introduced Nilles to long, loud applause.
Why this was never going to be easy
Take a moment on what she actually agreed to do.
Neil Peart’s parts are not just difficult. They are known. Thousands of people in that building have air-drummed “Tom Sawyer” for forty years and can tell you exactly where the fills land. There is no room to paraphrase.
Worse, they are difficult in an unfashionable way. Peart’s playing is dense with orchestration — parts that move around a huge kit rather than sitting in a pocket — which means you cannot simplify without it being audible from the back row.
And then there is the emotional weight. This is a band playing its first shows since burying its drummer, in his hometown, in front of an audience that has spent five years wondering whether it should happen at all.
Playing well was the easy part.
The gear caught up too
One practical detail we wrote about separately: Meinl built her new cymbals for this tour — a 22” extra-heavy Lunar Ride and 14” Lunar Hats, both designed to cut through an arena rather than a rehearsal room.
That is not vanity. Her own music is intricate and dynamic, played in rooms where subtlety survives. Rush at Scotiabank Arena is a different physics problem, and she needed heavier metal to solve it. The full details on those cymbals are here.
Final thoughts
Replacing an irreplaceable drummer is a job with only two possible outcomes, and most people take it knowing the odds.
Every review we can find says she cleared it. Not “did a respectful job in impossible circumstances” — actually cleared it, on merit, in front of the toughest audience the gig has.
Good.
If you do not know her work outside Rush, start with our full Anika Nilles feature — the solo records, the odd time signatures and the Jeff Beck years that got her here. And for another drummer who does the technically-impossible-but-musical thing, Thomas Lang is well worth your time.
Sources: Exclaim!, MetalTalk and Billboard Canada.