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 title: Breaching The 'Schism'
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After nearly five years without an original recording, side project 
excursions (singer Maynard James Keenan's A Perfect Circle and 
bassist Justin Chancellor's Peach), and the explosion of rap/rock, 
L.A.-based prog-metal quartet Tool returns with "Lateralus" 
(Volcano), a big, fat, 80-minute middle finger to today's hard rock 
conventions. 

Wrapped in seemingly un-navigable folds of murky movements and 
contemplative Keenan vocalizations, "Lateralus" makes 1996's overly 
ambitious "Aenima" sound like Tool on MTV's Total Request Live. While 
tracks like "Parabola" and lead single "Schism" maintain some vague 
semblance of traditional song structure, the majority of "Lateralus," 
like the nine-minute title track and the 11-minute "Reflection," 
carries on like Tool but dashed with even more hallucinogens. 

It's no surprise that David Botrill, who produced, mixed, and 
engineered "Aenima," was called out to do the same here. The results 
are undeniably like nothing else, but sound much more like Tool than 
one would have imagined after such a long absence.

  
Posted to t.d.n: 05/15/01 15:58:57