Publication: Soundi
Date: May, 2001
Transcribed by
Atte (qlqnen@hotmail.com)
Atte (qlqnen@hotmail.com)
page: title: Lateralus review author: Petri Silas First off, I'd like to apologize if this text seems very hard to read. Finnish writers have a fetish for loads of big words in one sentence, making translation a bitch. Thank you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TOOL Lateralus Volcano Plumbing the sludges of nihilism and self-loathing, Tool's succes has grown to surprising figures. So on the brink of the quartet's new album, taking into consideration even the shape reminding of of Orwell and Huxley, the first feeling is relief. Fantastic Ænima (1996), which suprisingly went platinum in the USA, seems to have winged this mainly californian band to an even more ferocious downward spiral to the heart of their Jungian dystophy-metal - so luckily nowhere near what could be called as commercial. Maynard James Keenan still sings like a black temple muezzin and Adam Jones lets his scorchingly manic hypnoguitar point out, why the vocalist's frankly childish A Perfect Circle was in the end, nothing more than sucking up goths, money gathering project. As a counter weight for the heavy mayhem, drummer Danny Carey rations with bassist Justin Chancellor some geometrically accurate odd time signatures and flowing 6/8 rumbling with style, that makes even the most complicated parts submitted pieces to serve the entirety, instead of being just end in itself -tricks. The groups developed sense of muscal drama can be heard in such tracks as Schism, the couple Parabol-Parabola, polyrhythm-filled opener The Grudge, or closing on symphonic measures, the trio Disposition-Reflection-Triad. Tool makes on their third full length album challenging, sometimes even historic music, that none of it's colleagues could or even dared to make. Clearly in this direction has before now only gone the 12 year old canadian Voi Vod album sci-fi-metal-epic Nothingface. As far as it's textual expression is concerned, Lateralus is like a cold examination of those same absurd and happiness- lacking subjects as the people who painted themselves on the face of world's history; lyrical geniuses like Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus and Franz Kafka. It is not exaggerated in the least bit to say that Maynard James Keenan is iin his own league of rock lyricists.Although his themes (humanity, relationships, existentialism, sexualism) are much the same as his contemporaries, the pondering and deconstructive disposal is unique. To make the soup less sour, Tool offers once again - reaching the Adam Jones designed magnificent cover - their own pseudo-scientific mysticism, numeral magikal, numerological, astronomical and occultistc nuances, as well as different anatomical and medical interests. Decadentic or negative smart-man's metal band is not what this often very grim quartet is, even though many try to categorize them as such. Born under great amount of pressure, David Bottrill's fantastically recorded Lateralus is the disc, on which Tool finally proofs to be among the greatest. This 78-minute 58- second masterpiece is the first true wagnerian rock work of art, a logical continuum to King Crimson's and Van Der Graaf Generator's generation old brilliances Red and Pawn Hearts, Tool's very own Salò - the 120 Days of Sodoma and Gomorra. Petri Silas **** (out of five) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To put it in a more simple way: "I know arts and I like to make people understand this, the album rocks like a moose, but I give it a lousy four stars".
Posted to t.d.n: 10/31/02 19:30:16