Publication: Guitar World
Date: November 1996
Transcribed by Neil James (nj0362a@american.edu)
You probably already got this, but here's the review of Aenima from November's issue of Guitar World: **** TOOL Aenima ZOO Tool makes thinking-person's rock, suitable for headphone absorption or a mosh pit. Dense, exhilarating, dark and challenging, Aenima is worth the three-year wait since the Platinum-selling Undertow first raised the scepter of the band's provocative, industrial-tinged strangeness. Production by the band and David Botrill (King Crimson, Robert Fripp) is clean yet complex with progressive and adventurous overtones that include Middle-Eastern flavorings. Aenima clocks in at 77 minutes, with Tool squeezing in all the music possible, and the result is nothing short of an epic aural landscape. Featuring a "song" in German, an instrumental, spoken word oddness, a scathing and amusing indictment of pop culture (Aenima) and tunes topping 13 minutes, Aenima is an enigma--but one worth investigating. --Katherine Turman [note: the misspelling of Aenema was present in the article, obviously the two different spellings have been confusing even the best of us.]