Tool

This work is a journey into man and his mind. Circular, recurring sounds, shapes that tangle and unravel along a path that will seem absurd and incomprehensible on first listen, but which over time reveals its own lucid madness.

"Lateralus" is the culmination of a project that builds on the previous "Ænima", reinventing it with new sonorities, easing the predecessor's gloom while retaining the essential hallmarks of what is by now the Tool sound: hellish rhythms, odd time signatures, harmonic progressions, and a flawless synchrony among all the instruments. Onto this already explosive mix pounces, tiger-like, Maynard James Keenan's extraordinary voice, capable of attacking a single note for almost 30 seconds (The Grudge) or producing desperate, Tibetan-monk-like wails (Parabol). "Lateralus" is a monumental work, the album that brings progressive and metal together at the dawn of the century, going beyond mere musical meaning, as we'll see further on - a record whose finest weapons also include drummer Danny Carey's remarkable technical growth, the true star of some of the album's best moments (Ticks & Leeches, to name just one).

"Lateralus" unfolds as a series of revelations: the first, "The Grudge", shows what Tool have become and what to expect from this record. Tight lines, endless time signatures and hypnotic drum patterns. The first minute and a half is one continuous crescendo that explodes into Carey's double bass drum. The track develops by twisting around itself, weaving new melodies that collide with one another. One of the song's peculiarities, which seems forbidding on first listen, is that it stays (for over 8 minutes) entirely in the key of D. The devastating peak of this masterpiece arrives right at the seven-minute mark, where Maynard lets out a piercing scream lasting 27 seconds. The suffering is at its height, anger and pessimism seep through lyrics that ooze darkness from every angle ("Wear your envy like a crown, desperate to control, unable to forgive, we're sinking deeper and deeper").

One needs to catch one's breath, and ahead of "The Patient" comes a micro-track of decompression ("Eon Blue Apocalypse", a funereal acoustic guitar figure), which releases the listener from the mood built by the previous track and eases the way into the next.

"The Patient" is split into two contrasting halves. The first, minimalist and whispered, cradles the listener and slowly leads them toward the second: a crescendo of guitar, bass and drums which, together with Maynard's powerful voice, trace harmonic patterns that only resolve after many bars, trapping the listener in a sense of incompleteness as fascinating as it is terrifying. This is one of the album's most enigmatic tracks: impossible to decipher even after 9 minutes of musical rising and falling.

"Mantra" is the second micro-track, its title neatly summing up the essence of the whole project: an album with something religious, something Zen about it, colliding with Keenan's strongly anti-religious views. It's a minute of apparent silence, but what this track actually contains is the endlessly slowed-down meow of one of Maynard's Siamese cats...

At the door stands "Schism", a hallucinated track and the apotheosis of Tool's whole philosophy. From the opening bass line (in 5/4) to the obsessive drumming of the finale, endless "morbid" interweavings embrace each other in perfect symmetry: shifts in rhythm, pitch and vocal delivery, explosions of rage, all condensed and fused with an unreal naturalness, in total harmony. At a certain point in the song, it almost sounds as if Tool have lost themselves, but everything culminates with Jones's delay-drenched guitar, accompanying another set of lyrics steeped in pure unease ("There was a time that the pieces fit, but I watched them fall away, mangled up and buried like a broken back that's held together with duct tape"). Keenan reaches total catharsis when he gives himself over to romanticism ("Between supposed lovers/brothers") before the hypnotic closing sabbath, as the instruments melt into a single cauldron of rage that engulfs the listener, dragging them along into this paranoid spiral. We also recommend watching the stunning video to fully grasp the worth of this song.

"Parabol"/"Parabola" is perhaps the catchiest track on the whole album, and definitely the most metal one: it's the turning point that leads into the most fear-ridden section of "Lateralus". As we mentioned, the entire work is built around mathematics, and "Parabola" examines the geometric figure of the same name, ultimately weaving it into a hymn to life ("This body makes me feel eternal. All this pain is an illusion. I live"). The transition between the two tracks is legendary, with a stunning contrast between the intimate, acoustic guitar figure and the deafening feedback that leads into the electric track.

We could call it a pause. A separation. What has happened so far is a closed chapter.

It's "Ticks And Leeches" that welcomes us into a schizoid world of rage and illusions, of rhythmic explosions and minimalist stripping-down. It's the most violent song on the album: Keenan screams out all his malaise while the rhythm section builds a wall of sound of rare power. The track marks Danny Carey's creative peak, his triumph.

Contrast is the load-bearing pillar of the whole work, a cyclical string of discontinuities that keep coming back around. "Ticks And Leeches" is a journey into the hidden rage inside each of us, an absolutely devastating song. It has never been played live, despite the band members' insistence with Keenan. It's understandable: on this track his vocal cords are pushed to their absolute limit, and the one time they did play it, the singer had to use a distortion box just to get through it.

The title track, "Lateralus", greets us with a barely-there intro of guitar and drums that gradually grows, blossoming into a sweeping, expansive riff before dropping back into tight, locked-down rhythms. Keenan's chameleonic voice and Adam Jones's guitar work condense grunge, punk-hardcore bursts of speed and a heavy use of effects.

And it's on this track that we need to open a parenthesis about the album's mathematical references: the cover art depicts a Fibonacci spiral, based on the mathematical sequence discovered by Fibonacci (in which every number after the second is the sum of the two preceding ones: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21...). The verses of "Lateralus" are syllabically structured to spell out the Fibonacci sequence exactly:

Black (1)

then (1)

white are (2)

all I see (3)

in my infancy (5)

red and yellow then came to be (8 )

and so on... (one last curiosity: on the back of the CD the track is listed as "Lateralis", but it's just a printing error, deliberately echoing an earlier printing error on the album "Ænima"...).*

What follows is the shortest song on the album: "Disposition" (4'47"), which in many ways recalls the version of "Pushit" found on the "Salival" boxset: a first part built solely around guitar, bass and voice; in the second part, by contrast, percussion enters and the bass is used more assertively. There's also a curious link to the following track, "Reflection": a drumstick bouncing off one of the drum kit's toms.

"Reflection" carries us towards the conclusion of this journey. Hypnotic sounds that slowly evolve, together with the suitably distorted vocals, once again evoke that sense of "prayer" that runs through the whole album, sealed here in a crescendo towards the ending — an ending that doesn't explode but instead collapses in on itself, in a sonic depression made up of pure effects alone. The slap bass, the African horn, the evocative atmosphere born from the alchemy between the instruments make this song one of the high points of Tool's entire career, paradoxically the least metallic track on the record. But labels are entirely superfluous here.

"Triad" is an instrumental with a more linear trajectory than the other tracks: it's here above all that you can trace the numerous industrial influences that shape Tool's sound, also evident in their earlier work (and especially in the unreleased tracks included on the 2001 "Salival" box set).

The final track, "Faap De Oiad", is a delirium of distortion and percussion, with a voice (Keenan?) filtered to simulate a phone conversation. Almost pointless, but essential to hit the total running time of 79 minutes and 30 seconds, the maximum a CD can hold (our copies are a bit warped, we can admit it now...).

"Lateralus" is a complex, psychotic record. A record that refuses to gather dust on your shelf. It demands to be devoured. And it's worth every minute.

Tool:

Maynard James Keenan (vocals)

Danny Carey (drums)

* Thanks to http://toolshed.down.net for the information regarding the relationship between Lateralus and the Fibonacci spiral.

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13/11/2006