Tool

For my birthday this year, I was lucky enough to be gifted with a truly wonderous wonder indeed! "Lateralus," by TOOL. I can still remember stopping dead in the middle of working out, the first time I heard "Schism" on the radio. I was totally blown away, and thought; "Who the fuck is this?" The musicianship and creativity of the song totally blew me away. Most of the alternative bands out these days have not impressed me much, and hard rock went down the tubes in the 1980's. I quit liking hard rock and metal when bands like Zep bit the dust, replaced with these Van Halen mock-up metal acts and glam rockers that were really sad in my view. All of my favorite progressive bands died out in the 1970's as well. (Or became so bad, I had wished they had died out.) My listening habits have mostly consisted of playing old Gentle Giant, Floyd, and King Crimson albums. (Yes, albums! don't laugh) So when I first heard TOOL, I was dumbfounded. I have to say, that TOOL's combination of progressive, metal, and industrial influences are one of the most original fusions of style that I have ever heard. This is backed up with raw power combined with potent lyrical and thematic sensibilities that are immersed in their force and subtlety. Their music is like being hit with a feathered sledge-hammer coated with opium. I must confess that I have never heard anything like it. Although I like King Crimson as much as TOOL, TOOL nonetheless is far superior to the much ballyhooed acts of the 1970's like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and of course Zep. These bands are dwarfed by TOOL, in my view. The reason I say this is because these bands had discernable influences that they copied from older acts, in their own way. TOOL has taken influences past, and combined them in such a way where there is no discernable influence. There is such a perfect fusion of style and aesthetics that it can only be said that TOOL alone is TOOL's most discernable influence. This kind of thing is unheard of! Who do these guys think they are, in being such geniuses? They make me sorry that I gave up playing the guitar, and may inspire me to pick it up again. Of course the slightly jealous ex-musician in me, upon hearing "Schism" on the radio thought: "There is no fucking way that the whole album can be as good as 'Schism.'" Well, I put on "Lateralus," and I was shocked to find that there was not one bad song on the whole CD. Every album has at least ONE bad song. Who do these guys think they are, spinning out totally perfect CD's? I have to say, "Lateralus" is addictive, especially at loud volumes. (Not sure if my neighbors feel that way about it.) This CD is worth every cent paid for it, and more. I also checked out the Tool website, and really enjoyed the articles by Blair and the other content. Having been a long student of Crowley myself, it is quite evident that Blair has put a good deal of serious time into studying the occult. He knows his OTO. "I Nuit but I Hadit, no, I Hadit but I Nuit," does not apply to this guy. And TOOL even has detractors that have ripped off their website images, and are trying to convince the world that TOOL is some sinister cabal of Freemasonic sorcerers using psycho-dramatic processing to entrain the group-mind of youth culture with sinister NLP. If so I am a willing zombie. I will never get sick of this band!

June 2003