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 title: Tool:Lateralus Review
author: Dan Silver

Fred Durst's favourite band put more distance between 
themselves and their peers with complex fourth album.

Tool are as close as heavy metal gets to a genuine 
enigma.The quartet's almost avant garde approach is 
lightyears removed from that genre's skewed idea of 
commercialism, and yet their records sell by the 
million.Similary, publicity-shy frontman Maynard James 
Keenan has achieved iconic status among headbangers 
despite a tendency to perform live wearing a bustier and 
accessorised, arse-length wig.It's no suprise then that 
Lateralus, the band's first album for five years, requires 
multiple listens just to even scratch it's matt-black 
surface.The churning riffs at the heart of hulking epics 
Parabola and Ticks & Leeches provide initial entry points, but 
ultimately it's Tool's experimental, borderline progressive, 
edge that proves most rewarding.Inventive and intense, 
songs like The Grudge and Schism are painstakingly - and 
patiently - constructed from countless layers and textures, 
the overall effect akin to translating latter-day Radiohead 
into Metallica's leaden lexicon.Extraordinary in every sense.
4/5 Stars
Posted to t.d.n: 09/06/02 14:30:01