Publication: Alternative Press
Date: July, 2001
Transcribed by
Preston Ginn (elvis12@texas.net)
Preston Ginn (elvis12@texas.net)
page: 57 title: The long-awaited return of the art-metal masters author: Phil Freeman Tool have spent five years battling companies to get another disc out after the throbbing brilliance of 1996's Ænima. Well, here it is, and it sounds...exactly like vintage Tool. Lateralus could have been released four years ago, for all the sonic progression that's contained (or not contained) within its 79 minutes. Some of the sonic hallmarks of Ænima are here in virtually cloned form. There are 90-second musical interludes ("Eon Blue Apocalypse," "Mantra"), a hidden final track full of radio static and found rants about alien mumbo-jumbo-and, of course, the sound is the throbbing morass Tool basically patented in the mid-1990s. Tracks like "The Grudge" (with its chorus, "Wear the grudge like a crown/Desperate to control/Unable to forgive and sinking deeper") and the first single, "Schism," are particularly archetypal. "Schism" begins with acoustic guitar, but recovers itself into a liquid bass line reminiscent of something from Jane's Addiction's hidden genius, Eric Avery. Tool always sounded like Jane's Addiction would have, if Eric and Stephen Perkins had been running the show-that is, if the anarchic elements (Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro) had been excised and voted down. There is no chaos in Tool's sound world. Every second of Lateralus is exquisitely, obsessively controlled-this is rock as Cornell box. Lateralus is more self-indulgent than Radiohead's Kid A, because of its very lack of experimentation-its steadfast insistence that fans smart enough to be listening to Tool in the first place in stead of, say, Pantera will still, after all the delays, expect-and deserve-nothing but 79 minutes of the same old thing. Tool are living in a bubble, and without some kind of outside- world intervention they're going to turn into the thinking man's AC/DC. "Parabola" comes seven tracks in, and it's the first totally ass-kicking arena-rock moment on the album. It's got a big chorus, it's almost got a guitar solo, and it's the only track that indicates Tool have been listening to anything but their own back catalog for the last half-decade. Tool are brilliant, and they are at the top of their game on this disk. But it must be questioned whether their music still has and audience. Tool's brand of defiantly arty prog-metal captured underground America's consciousness in the band's first go-round. But now rock is owned by the Slipknots and the Limp Bizkits. The band who share Tool's worldview most closely right now are probably Deftones, so perhaps the success of White Pony bodes well for Lateralus. That would be a good thing. In the face of overwhelming, culture-wide mulletude, a thick slab of art-rock is exactly what's needed. Phil Freeman
Posted to t.d.n: 05/29/01 17:48:24