page: 
 title: New Releases
author: Dan Silver

      
Reviewed: December 2001 
Genre: Heavy Metal 
Label: MUSICFORNATIONS 
Release Date: 2001-05-14 00:00:00 
Key Tracks: Schism, The Patient, Lateralus 
 
 
 
Tool are as close as heavy metal gets to a genuine enigma. 
The quartet's almost avant garde approach is light years 
removed from even that genre's skewed idea of 
commercialism, and yet their records sell by the million. 
Similarly, 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 surprise then that Lateralus, the 
band's first album for five years, requires multiple listens just 
to even scratch its 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. 
Reviewed by Dan Silver 
 

Posted to t.d.n: 11/28/02 10:26:21