Publication: De Volkskrant (Dutch newspaper)
Date: May, 2001
Transcribed by
Gerard Quik (kolenkit@yahoo.com)
Gerard Quik (kolenkit@yahoo.com)
page: title: Rhythm section makes Tool startling author: Gijsbert Kramer Rhythm section makes Tool Startling Tool: Lateralus. Vulcano/Zomba. Tool seems to be the sole surviving band from the heavy music scene that started off in the early nineties, that still tries to scrutinise the boundaries of modern day rock. For artistically we don’t have to expect much more from Korn and Limb Bizkit. Sure, there are still The Deftones, but even their ingenious metalraps start to look pale compared by the innovating new Tool album. Just like the so-called renewing post rock from the likes of Mogwai is shattered by Lateralus. Tool may have kept us waiting for more than four years, the impact made by Lateralus is a fact nonetheless. For almost eighty minutes, Tool grabs you by the balls. They don’t use songs or melodies. There are no songs. And still. Tool brings forth complex and spinned out pieces of music with many shift changes in tempo. This music could easily be confused with old-fashioned symphonic rock if Tool had a keyboard tiger like Keith Emerson or Rick Wakeman on the pay-list. But luckily, they haven’t. Tool uses the old guitar-bass-drums idiom, and with that it goes much further than any contemporary rock band. When in the past Tool liked to give demonstrations in virtuosity, this time round all ostentatious showing of musical capability is left behind. Most startling and also renewing is the way the rhythm section sets to work. But even the prolix ensemble playing of Justin Chancellor on bass and Danny Carey on drums is in the often more than 10 minutes lasting pieces continuously extraordinarily exciting. Guitar and voice sound just a bit too metal. Singer Maynard James Keenan’s metal scream sounds just a bit too pathetic. While the guitar-sound also resembles too much the sound of Metallica during the eighties. This and the very affected cryptic lyrics make it difficult to really love Lateralus. The admiration for the album however is intact. Seldom an album is that overwhelming.
Posted to t.d.n: 05/27/01 11:28:17