Tool
“Wait…Tool? Huh? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?” – What Al is thinking right now
“The only difference between our fans and Limp Bizkit fans is that our fans can read.” – Maynard James Keenan
“I love that man.” – Laura Y.
Albums Reviewed:
I figured Tool would be the perfect band to review after Yes, since I can stay in that complicated, progressive mode, but go to the opposite end of the happiness spectrum without having to sit through a whole bunch of King Crimson albums. Whereas Yes were some happy, fruity hippies, Tool are some dark, weird, fucked-up hippies. They came in originally with the “alternative revolution” of the early-‘90’s, but then, with their second album, stopped being “alternative” and started being “fucking messed-up.” Ofcourse, by doing this, they became really, really good. I’ll take Aenima over Undertow any day of the week and TWICE on Saturday, at least when there isn’t a home football game, because I’d be busy then.
So, yeah, I
like this band a lot, which is most likely why I’ve decided to review
them. Though I guess it’d be fun to
review a shitty band, huh? The writing
would be fun, I mean. The fact that I’d
have to sit through their shitty albums a bunch of times would suck, however. So I probably won’t do that any time
soon. Review a shitty band. Anyway, onto the lineup of Tool, who are not
a shitty band. From left to right, we’ve
got bassist Justin Chancellor (who joined in 1994, Paul D’Amour played on Undertow),
drummer Danny Carey, singer Maynard James Keenan (well, the top of his bald
head), and guitarist Adam Jones. Keenan
and Jones are really the tag team behind the weirdness. Maynard dresses up in all sorts of silly
outfits (full-body paint, spandex, drag, you name it) and writes lyrics about
half of
And, onto the reviews!
Undertow (1993)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Sober”
Now, as it happens, I actually came to hear this record after Tool’s next two albums, and so that is most likely the reason for its (relatively, depending on whether you like Tool or you’re Al) low rating. After having listened to and internalized BOTH Aenima and Lateralus, this album seems so…blah. I mean, it’s a nice metal album, with some neat songs, but none of it really GRABS me. Plus, there’s no German egg recipes, pissed-off Italian men, or phone calls from Area 51, so that’s another problem.
So, yeah, this one isn’t NEARLY as adventurous as the next two Maynard’s foursome would do, but that doesn’t mean its bad! It’s not bad at all. And it’s got some pretty goddamn ANGRY lyrics. “You LIE, CHEAT AND STEAL! And yet I tolerate you!” Calm down, Maynard! Hey, judging from that line, shouldn’t “Intolerance” have actually been called “Tolerance?” Ah, who the fuck cares, since the next song is called “Prison Sex (I think it should have been called “Don’t Pick Up The Fucking Soap, Dumbass!” but what do I know),” and, if I remember correctly, was actually a SINGLE. Now, that must have been an interesting sell to radio programmers. “Yeah, um, here’s Tool’s new single.” “What’s it called?” “Oh…um, ‘Prison Sex.’” “WHAAAAAAAT?” Oh, and how about a single with the line “I have found some kind of temporary sanity in this shit, blood, and cum on my hands.” Yup, Tool were really into the, you know, FAMILY-oriented music. “Mommy, what’s cum?” “Oh…nothing, dear. Why don’t you turn back to the Teletubbies, sweetie.” Good song, though!
But the next tune, and the other single (actually a decent hit, I think) is REALLY good, and that would, ofcourse, be “Sober.” I DEFY you to not sing along to the “WHYYYYYYYYY can’t we not be sober???” chorus, even if is mean-sounding and creepy as hell. To tell you the truth, though, the rest of this record (outside of “Sober”) tends to blend together a lot for me. There’s just NO variety at all. I mean, Aenima doesn’t have tons of variety either, but the songs there are interrupted by funny keyboard breaks and babies crying, so I don’t get bored with that album. Plus, the songs are better than this record. There’s some neat stuff to be found here, though. At the halfway point of “Swamp Song,” Danny Carey breaks out some ridonculously cool Stewart Copeland-style drumming, then gets broken off by Adam Jones’s LOUUUUUUD riff, then comes back with the Copeland-ness, and this repeats a few times. I think that’s a really neat section. However, the chorus is pretty fucking dumb: “The bog is thick and easy to get lost in, ‘cause you’re a dumbass, belligerent fucker!!!!” Um…yeah. That’s a long way from the Lateralus lyrics, for sure.
Speaking of Lateralus, one thing I find interesting is how the band, from song to song, sounds more and more progressively Lateralus-y, something you start to notice with the title track. The “half as high as heaven…half as clear as reason…” part sounds damn good to me! I quite like the title track, might be my second-favorite track here. Who knows. Anyways, whereas the first half of the album has poppy (at least for Tool) songs, the second half has more multi-part shit. Ofcourse, it can’t hold a candle to what they’d do later, but it’s still neat. “4 Degrees” and “Flood” are the last two actual tunes, and they continue this pattern I’ve so cleverly uncovered. “4 Degrees” actually starts out with some Indian-sounding string instrument (I don’t think it’s a sitar…I might be wrong, though. I usually am). And, hey, Danny Carey breaks out the scary bongos! I love the Danny Carey scary bongos. No one plays the scary bongos like Danny Carey. “Flood” doesn’t even have the first real Maynard vocals until almost FIVE minutes into the song, so that’s art-rock for you!
Then, ofcourse, there’s the closing “song” “Disgustipated.” Tool ends every one of their albums with a long, weird, extra-freaky track that doesn’t really seem all that connected to the rest of the material, but at least on the next two records it’s an actual SONG, you know, instead of whatever the fuck “Disgustipated” is. Now, I’m not saying I dislike the thing. It’s pretty funny (“These are the cries of the carrots! You see, Reverend Maynard, tomorrow is harvest day, and to them it is THE HOLOCAUST.”). I’m just saying it would’ve been nice to end the record with AN ACTUAL SONG instead of freaky drum beats over Maynard repeating “Life…feeds on life…feeds on life…” over and over again. At the end there’s like eight minutes of squeaky white noise before some guy says something else cryptic, which you can hear if you don’t mind sitting through eight minutes of squeaky white noise. Or I guess you could just fast-forward, too.
Oh, and hey! What’s that thing on the album cover! I don’t know, but it’s fucking COOL!
Oleg
Sobolev (dima@aspol.ru) writes:
That closing song is a
nightmare. It strikes my ears with waves of pain and the terrible, absolutely
dorky voice of Maynard talking to me how it's good not to eat carrots, because
they (check this out!) HAVE A LIFE. Stupid. Other than that, the album is
awesome. Hard-rocking Rollins Band sound mixed with a bunch of good ol' dear
prog. What else I need to meet my old days? Such nice and gently songs as
"Prison Sex", "Sober" or "4 Degrees" will warm my
soul and bring the romantic memories of my first kiss when I am old. An 8.
Aenima (1996)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Aenema”
But,
while the Undertow cover was cool, the Aenima cover is fucking
fantastic! It’s HOLOGRAPHIC! Those eyes?
They move around when you move the album around. And there’s other pictures in the inner
artwork that do this too. Oh, and the CD
tray? Take out the CD, and it’s a
holographic picture of
And it’s also incredibly fucked-up, which is how I’d describe the music inside the scary holographic packaging of Aenima. Now, I pronounce it “enema,” like the thing you stick up your ass. If you’re a prude and you want to pronounce it “onema,” then go ahead. The up-the-ass pronunciation more accurately describes the music on the record, so that’s the one I go with. Plus, it reminds me of when I worked at a pharmacy and would stock enemas on the shelves, and then, when I got upgraded to the cash register (Yes! Moving up in the world!), I would sell the aforementioned enemas to like 80-year-olds. Then I’d go to the store bathroom and puke my guts out, because that’s something I just do NOT want to picture.
But where
was I? Oh, yes, Tool’s second album, and
their first with new bassist Justin Chancellor.
Well, it’s a HUUUUUGE improvement from Undertow. And the thing is you know RIGHT AWAY that
this isn’t your older brother’s Tool album when you hear the funky electronic
intro to “Stinkfist.” Now THAT is a cool
intro. This song blows “Tolerance” right
out of the goddamn briny
But there are more improvements over the last record here than just intro quality. How about the lyrics? With a few exceptions, they’re MUCH more mature-sounding than “You lie, cheat and steal!” How about “And as the walls come down, and as I look in your eyes, my fear begins to fade, recalling all of the times I have died, and will die” from “H.”? Depressing, yes, but better-written, methinks. The actual music (you know, besides the intros) is a lot better, too, though there’s still room for improvement. Some of the lengthier tracks seem a little unfocused. Most of “Pushit” is actually pretty boring. However, a moment at the end of “Pushit” is the single greatest thing Tool has EVER done. Maynard sings the line “I must persuade you another WAYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!” and the way he holds that last note…it’s absolutely breathtaking. Orgasmic. Godlike. You really have to hear it for yourself.
A few times they end up sounding like Undertow Tool, though, especially the quasi-throwaway song “Hooker With A Penis.” Among eight crazy art-metal songs, this tune stands out as just, um, fast and loud, and not much else. The chorus is HILARIOUS though. “I’m the man and you’re the man and he’s the man as well, so you can point that fuckin’ finger up your AAAAASSSSSSSS!!!!” Sweet. Lyrically, they also sink into juvenility on the pseudo-title track “Aenema,” despite the fact that it’s fucking awesome and the best song on here. They do this specifically during the “Fuck this, fuck that” part. Maynard sounds like a pissed-off teenager. One of the things he’s pissed at is great, however. “Fuck L. Ron Hubbard and fuck all his clones!” YOU HEAR THAT JOHN TRAVOLTA! HUH!? Battlefield Earth my ASS! Yeah, sure, it was a REALLY good idea to tilt the camera at a 45 degree angle in every goddamn scene in the movie, I swear. Dipshit.
So, anyway, musically, I’d say this album is a VERY high 8, but it gets the 9 for sheer and total weirdness. You see, there’s nine songs, but fifteen tracks. This is because in between the songs there are short little filler segways that are just ODD. In no particular order, we’ve got a four minute electrical storm (not to be confused with the four minute piece of shit U2 song “Electrical Storm”), thirty seconds of fuzz noises, a completely out-of-place schmaltzy keyboard break, a baby crying over strange industrial noises, a rant by a virulently anti-American Italian man, and a recipe for deviled eggs read in GERMAN. “Die Eier Von Satan” is so strange, I can’t rationally discuss it. Geez, what a WEIRD record (I haven’t even MENTIONED the fourteen minute closer “Third Eye” yet!). Tool are really some sick fucks, you know? But they write good music, so it’s OK! If Creed were to put a scary German man in between two of their, ahem, “power ballads,” it’d just sound ridiculous, but, between “Jimmy” and “Pushit,” this scary German man doesn’t sound that out of place, so more power to them.
“SIM SALA BIM BAMBA SALA DO SALADIM!!!!!”
Oleg
Sobolev (dima@aspol.ru) writes:
Now we're talking, Maynard! This album is one of the most angriest albums I have ever heard and it's also one of the best albums of 90's! My fave is "Eulogy" with that percussion (or whatever) noise and cool vocal melody. "Hooker With A Penis" is good one too. Just like in spirit of the previous record - GENTLE and NICE. With that gorgeous guitar tone and Maynard screaming "FUCK YOU, BUDDY!", you know that this song is suited for your girlfriend or your grandma. And I like "Third Eye" for some reason. I think they were highg on drugs while recording that song. As well as 'Pushit", but it has a little bit more mellody. A 9.
Salival (2000)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Pushit”
After Aenima, Tool released a live CD/VHS or CD/DVD (depending on if you’re still in the STONE AGE) package that contained a full album as well as all of their music videos (which are fucking WEIRD). I don’t have that. However, my psycho-crazy Tool fanatic friend Laura was gracious enough to burn me a copy of the CD part of that package some time ago, and so thus here we’ve got a review of a live album you can’t actually buy by itself. So therefore it’s probably utterly pointless to review it, isn’t it?
Since I’ve
written a whopping six lines of text already, I might as well keep going,
though. Can’t stop now! And, just so you know, this isn’t actually a
live album. This is one FUCKED-UP
hodgepodge of half-live, half-studio material that forms a coherent whole about
as well as
Anyway, after Maynard finishes yelling “PRYING OPEN MY THIRD EYE!” a bunch of times, the band goes into a live version of “Part Of Me,” from the Opiate EP, something I don’t have because I have a staunch no-EP policy for this site. This is essentially because Radiohead has about five EP’s out I really don’t want to bother with. That and I’m lazy, though I think those two reasons might be connected. Anyway, it roars and rocks with a sort of punkish energy completely absent from stuff like Aenima and Lateralus. Ofcourse, I don’t picture Tool as a punk band, so I’ll take “The Grudge” quite happily, thank you. The third live performance, “You Lied,” is a cover of a song from the band Justin Chancellor was in before he joined the Toolsters. It’s good. No Tool, but not bad.
The studio
stuff will throw you for a fucking loop, though. First, we’ve got “Message To Harry Manback
II,” the sequel to the angry Italian man from Aenima.
Good god is this guy PISSED. “My
heart beats too fast because I’m thinking of your fucking ugly face. You…you suck.” Sorry, Vincenzo. How’s aboutta spicy meatball, eh! I rigatoni sono MOLTO deliziosi!!! Si!
We’ve also got “Merkaba,” a 10 minute instrumental that doesn’t really
go anywhere, but functions as nice mood music (or, mood music for Tool, so it’s
weird and freaky), as well as “L.A.M.C.,” or “Los Angeles Municipal
Court.” This is a fictional automated
phone service that says things like “if you are receiving physical therapy from
a naturalized citizen but have not voted ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on Proposition 187 and
have not reported to the City Attorney, but have filled out form DD 3018,
please press six.” Huh. And at the end of this thing there’s a secret
country-sounding track called “Maynard’s Dick.”
Uh-huh…
Now, if I seem somewhat indifferent
towards this album so far, especially considering I gave it an 8, that’s
because I haven’t gotten to WHY it gets an 8, and that is because of two
brilliant tracks, one studio and one live, that Maynard’s tools have tossed on
here. The first would be a cover of Led
Zeppelin’s “No Quarter.” Any band who
chooses to cover a Led Zeppelin (a.k.a. GOD) song (and especially one as
brilliant as “No Quarter”) better do a DAMN good job, and they do! This was probably the perfect Zep song for
them to do, since it was already dark, creepy, and disturbing, or, in other
words, right up Tool’s alley. They
change the lyrics a bit, but I GUESS (reluctantly) that it’s OK, since Maynard
sounds super-duper-awesome singing it.
They shouldn’t have tacked on that instrumental section at the end,
though. DON’T MESS WITH THE GODS!
Now, for a song to utterly DWARF a
very well and tastefully-done Led Zeppelin cover, it better be mind-numbingly
brilliant, and that is exactly what the live version of “Pushit” here is. Until the last few minutes, it’s COMPLETELY
different from the studio version. They
give it a softer, scary bongo-heavy treatment, and it’s probably my favorite
(studio or live) Tool song ever. The
thing is, a lot of the Aenima version was sort of boring, but by going
soft and breaking out the scary bongos, they turn “boring” into “hypnotically
beautiful.” Then they go back into a
more accurate portrayal of the studio version right when the studio version
gets good, about a minute or two before the “I must persuade you another WAY!”
line, which, impossibly, sounds even better live than in studio. And then, ofcourse, it’s followed by the
bitter and pissy Italian man. Way to
ruin a mood, bitch.
Now the summary: two moments of
brilliance, three nice tunes, one overlong piece of background muzak from hell,
two fucked-up skits, and a hillbilly song about Maynard’s schlong. Yup, that sounds about right.
Oleg Sobolev (dima@aspol.ru)
writes:
I like that monologue that
guy tells to me before this version of "Third Eye". "Part Of
Me" is crazy, drunk and raw, and beats the version from Opiate to the
grave (go check Opiate, by the way - you're losing something). "You
Lied" is awesome too. "Pushit" is interesting ("We try to
do something different on this tour..." Hey, Maynard, you wrote the new
song, for fuck's sake!). "No Quater" and that long bunch of jamming
are boring. "LAMC" is terrible (who needs sampling?) and that hidden
track is unmemorable. An 8.
Lateralus (2001)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Lateralis”
This sure is one tough nut to crack. After a legal battle delayed the release of
Tool record #3 until five years after Aenima, the foursome
plopped out this, and it sounds like, to make it in five years, they were in a
HURRY. This is, without a doubt, a prog-rock
album, no ifs, ands or buts, or prog-metal, or whatever. It’s prog-something, in any case, and the
band even said they were trying to imitate Yes and King Crimson on this record,
“only with more emotion.” And, in the
case of Yes, a little less fucking fruity pansiness too, since this is deep,
dense, and foreboding upon first listen, but also hypnotic, which is good. This is easily my favorite Tool album. I like “hypnotic.” I guess that’s why I like Pink Floyd so damn
much.
However, even though
it is “prog,” and it is “hypnotic,” it also still “rocks” wholeheartedly, just
not as much as the last two albums. In
addition, this is, I believe, the first ever album to carry one of those
“explicit lyrics” stickers while not having a single curse-word in its lyrics
ANYWHERE. The only thing that could
POSSIBLY be characterized as “explicit” is the “SUUUUUCK MEEEEE DRYYYYYYYYY!”
chorus of “Ticks And Leeches.” But
that’s what ticks and leeches DO, dumbass, they suck your blood. It’s a METAPHOR. And how the HELL is that explicit, Mr.
Stick-Up-His-Ass Censor Man?
I don’t know, to be
honest, but I do know that this album RULES mercilessly, for a bunch of
reasons. First, despite how neat they
were, for the most part (“Mantra” excepted) Tool have done away with those
silly segway tracks. There are segues,
but “Eon Blue Apocalypse” is actually MUSIC, instead of goddamn fuzz noises,
and functions superbly as an intro to “The Patient.” “Parabol” is actually the same freaking song
as what comes after it. I have no
fucking clue what “Mantra” is, though, but I once heard it was the slowed-down
sound of a cat being choked. I don’t
think that’s accurate. Actually, despite
there being thirteen tracks listed, there are really only seven, at least to
me: “The Grudge,” “Eon Blue Apocalypse/The Patient,” “Mantra/Schism,”
“Parabol/Parabola,” “Ticks And Leeches,” “Lateralis,” and the closing trio of
“Disposition/Reflection/Triad,” which is really like one twenty-minute-plus
work, and is quite good, even if sometimes “Triad” makes me yearn for my
ant-infested bed and pillow (once again, fuck Dunster). There’s also “Faaip De Oiad,” a fictional
call from a former Area 51 employee placed over feedback noises and a drum solo
that scares the BEJEESUS out of me, but since there’s two minutes of silence in
between it and “Triad,” I just consider it sort of a tack-on at the end. It frightens me more than about five X-Files
episodes combined, though. No…I don’t
mean that. I mean “Major Dad.” “X-Files” is freaky, especially that inbred
people one that got banned. That’s some
FUCKED-UP SHIT.
But this album doesn’t
rule because the songs are long or because it has a freaky tack-on. It rules because the songs are GREAT. “The Grudge” opens the record with the sound
of a machine starting up, before the riff suddenly comes in and beats you over
the head. Maynard delivers a TWENTY-FOUR
second scream late in the song, which is pretty damn impressive, and cool. This is one of four songs on this record
that, to me, are just absolutely brilliant.
I love “The Patient,” especially the “And IIIIIII…still MAAAYYYY”
part. When Maynard isn’t yelling like a
maniac, he’s a damn good singer. Just
listen to “Schism!” There are
overdubbed, multi-tracked Maynards there!
I don’t think Tool had done that before, but I might have been too
distracted by the German guy to notice it on Aenima. The pseudo-title track (again with the stupid
vowel-changing shit) “Lateralis” is so good it’s RIDICULOUS. The lyrics are easily the best Maynard has
ever penned, too. To type them out would
take too long, so you’ll just have to trust me.
It’s my favorite studio Tool song ever (I still love that live
“Pushit!”).
What about the rest of
it, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you, you
impatient little cocksucker. “Parabol”
and “Parabola” are neat in that they’re mirrors of each other, slow, watery
murkiness vs. a full-on testicle-kicking version of the same song. “Ticks And Leeches” STILL isn’t explicit,
unless ofcourse Maynard is telling groupies to suck him dry, but I doubt
that. It’s probably my least favorite
track here, though the lyrics are amusing, so therefore it has the same
function as “Hooker With A Penis” from the last record: to kick a token amount
of ass and have funny lyrics but not be all that interesting. Another way Tool imitate Aenima’s structure is by placing the pseudo-title track near the end,
directly before the “long, extra-weird closer that doesn’t have bullshit to do
with the rest of the record,” a.k.a. (this time) “Disposition/Reflection/Triad.” It’s not bad, and “Reflection” is especially
super-duper hypnotic (huzzah!), but it can get a little slow when the same two
or three guitar lines are repeated for twenty-odd minutes. I guess it’s a lot like Pink Floyd in that
way. Like, how a many real ideas does
“Echoes” have, two? Three? Same with “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” Those songs rule, though, more than this one,
but Pink Floyd is a better band than Tool, so that’d make sense.
But, even though it’s not as good
Pink Floyd, this album is still, to quote the slang those crazy kids are using
now-a-days, “hella good.” I cannot WAIT
for the next Tool album, even if it won’t get released until roughly 2065. If they can make ANOTHER quantum leap
musically (as they’ve done with each album so far), that just might be able to
crack the 10 barrier. Cross your
fingers!
Oleg Sobolev (dima@aspol.ru)
writes:
When I first heard this
album, I HATED it. Fortunately, I like it now. Or, at least, the first half.
"The Grudge", "Parabol"/"Parabola",
"Schism" - these tracks rule mighty ass. The second half bores a shit
out of me - I can't rememeber anything. Anything at all. Hope the next album
will be much better. A 7.
Dominick
Actually, Maynard has
multitracked his voice before on a Tool album, but only for a little bit - the
part of "H." from Aenima where he goes 'I don't mind.... I
don't miind... I DON'T MIIIIIND!!" and then it goes all heavy. But
yeah, this is a really good album. "The Grudge",
"Schism", "Parabola", "Lateralus" - all excellent
songs. I just wish Maynard hadn't tried a death-metal scream thing on
"Ticks And Leeches".
10,000 Days (2006)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Vicarious”
No doubt taking the stern rebuke
contained in my review of
Oh, sure, it’s still Tool. The average song length is around eight minutes, the riffs pummel you into submission, the drum patters are astounding complex, there’s a lot of disturbing internal organ-esque imagery in the packaging, etc. They even included some sort of stereoscopic lenses this time so you can view whatever weird pictures they felt like coming up with like they’re COMING RIGHT AT YOU!!!! AAAAAAIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!!!! My problem here, like I said in the intro, is that I don’t feel that my ass is kicked sufficiently, as well as my concurrent feeling that my mind is not fucked with sufficiently either. It starts off invitingly enough, as “Vicarious” is so far and away the best song here it’s not even worth discussing. If you love Lateralus and feel it’s the best Tool experience one will ever be able to get (which, after listening to this album too many times to count, I now unfortunately believe), and you don’t want to experience anything less than that, I’d recommend listening to “Vicarious” on an endless loop and avoiding the rest of this thing. God, it rules. It’s moody, complex, crushing, emotional…all the things a Tool song is supposed to be. I wouldn’t say it’s better than “Schism” or “Lateralus” or “The Patient” or “Aenema” or “Stinkfist” or any of those songs, but it’s probably the equal of most of them, and certainly in the ballpark of all of them. Perhaps all this time spent away from Tool and with his increasingly soft side project APC (For the love of christ, it has James Iha in it now! Have you heard his solo stuff? It’s like kiddy bedtime stories. It’s ridiculous) has made Maynard more emotional and less likely to stick a guy sucking himself off on his band’s album art or tell everyone to “FUCKING LEARN TO SWIM!”, or perhaps the fact that he goes six years between Tool albums now means he’s just turning into a “mature” old fart, but either way, the kind of Tool experience one has come to expect from listening to Aenima and Lateralus is only contained in “Vicarious” on this album. The rest can suck a dick.
OK,
no. The rest is fine. They haven’t completely lost their
ability. They’re just not awesome
anymore. System of a Down has officially
taken their mantle as “metal band Brad really, really, really likes.” Tool’s only pretty good now, and I’m a little
disappointed about it. I have serious
issues with the Pitchfork claim that Maynard “made a
Anyway, the token Tool weird linking tracks aren’t that hot shit, either. “Lipan Conjuring” builds so much tension I now openly skip it, as well as the four-minute “Lost Keys (Blame Hofmann),” which actually comes directly after “Lipan Conjuring” in a lovely sequencing decision. “Roseta Stoned” has some cool parts and some bad parts, but it’s eleven-plus minutes, and the closing track is again non-musical, so whatever. This is a perfectly acceptable, fine, and good album without a track I really dislike and with one song that fucking owns (“Vicarious”). But it’s Tool, so I usually expect more. Oh well.
This review sucked, I know.
Relax, turn around, and take my
hand...