Tool

My Tool

Lateralus Limited

Edition Picture

tool fans:

“Noetic Experience” may involve an intuition, insight, psychic, esoteric, psychedelic, mystical awareness like an “inner knowing”, or a lattice of consciousness of observable symmetry in thoughts, patterns, feelings, sensations & vibrations.

Tool’s two “essential” releases are, without a doubt, important and technically excellent records. Know anything about prog rock or prog metal and these both clearly display some of the finest output to be found in the modern era of either of those genres. The famed Ænima and Lateralus are the kind of records where, if you’ve got the inclination to look deeper, they’ll only reward you on each listen. Personally, Lateralus does a bit more in that it’s more openly arty and more emphatically experimental, though both have their phenomenal merits and rank among this century’s finer metal releases.

However, like all of Tool’s music, they’re also filled with a certain hyper-masculine, puerile humour that sounds like they’re going for applause from an assembly of greasy, cackling teenage boys – the kind who still find the mere concepts of weed and sex hilarious. It can be difficult to stand and renders decent portions of both albums virtually unlistenable. I can look past other cringeworthy bits like the supposed Fibonacci syllable scheme on ‘Lateralus’ (what on Earth is the point? To show off your GCSE maths ability?) but the humour is detestable.