Lateralus - Tool

The Band. ----------------------------------- Maynard James Keenan (vocals) Danny Carey (drums) Adam Jones (guitar) Justin Chancellor (bass). Tool is an American progressive rock/metal band formed around 1990 in California, United States. They currently have 6 major releases: Opiate, Undertow, Aenima, Salival, Lateralus, 10,000 Days. Tool's style isn't the easiest thing to explain. They are a band known for combining hard rock with a wide variety of progressive structures, irregular time signatures and amazing lyrics that range from anger to philosophical and social matters. In a interview, it ...  Read the complete review

There's something strangely haunting in Tool's performance on Lateralus - an organic, yet maticulously calculated feel to the music, that digs underneath your skin and infects your mind with it's unusual rhythms, philosophical and circular lyrics and meditative feel. The opening track "The Grudge" may sound unstructured to some - with it's extremely unsual 10/8 metre and multiple sections. It really is a masterpiece in itself - an excellent opening track that brims with such power, yet never suffers from the "wall of sound" feel that some metal bands produce. There's so much going on rhythmically, that you can hear something new every time ...  Read the complete review

I can only begin to imagine the pressure put on Tool's shoulders over the past few years; Aenima accomplished and embodied what few albums can. It was complete, alarmingly deep, meticulous, and more importantly, it's own being. It was created as if in a musical void, absent of influence and resemblence. In fact, I can confidently proclaim that Aenima is among the ten best albums of the 90's. So how do you even begin to top an epic such as Aenima, or even match the scale of Aenima for that matter? While I can't tell you how, I can clue you into something that most Tool fans shouldn't find surprising: Tool have found the way, and have followed ...  Read the complete review

I have been a great Tool fan for about a year now, after I was recommended their Aenima album by a close friend. Needless to say, I was very excited to discover that they were releasing another album, their fourth, and I made sure that I bought it as soon as was possible. Lateralus is a true musical master piece, it is filled with tiny portraits made of highly complicated sound riffs, and in other places, it will baffle you with a massive array of sound, all meshed together as a battering wall of sound. Even the cover art is made of intricate layers, but this time they are layers of pictures on transparent sheets of plastic, so when the cover is completely closed, ...  Read the complete review

Tool are finally back to save the world from the rise of mediocre Nu-metal bands, or so the music press would have you believe. One thing is for certain Tool do stand head and shoulders clear of the majority of the pack of rabid rock bands breaking through into the mainstream. Tool are not a band happy in following the latest trends in rock music, there’s no concessions to hip hop beats and white boy rap to be found in Tools sounds. Instead Tool plough a musical route uniquely their own, adding a degree more intelligent and innovation to a genre to happy to dum itself down to appeal to the lowest common denominator. On Lateralus, Tool resume their musical ...  Read the complete review