Once you’ve got through what is quite possibly the most impressive packaging a CD has ever known, you launch straight into “The Grudge”, along with “Ticks and Leeches” the most conventional Tool track on here. I guess the album’s just so dense, so solid, that it manages not to break under the weight of its own pomposity.

Nine-minute tracks, swooshy space noises, tracks with more movements than an incontinent horse – yup, as Maynard himself said recently, sometimes you have to be careful you don’t end up playing “Stonehenge”.īut it works, incredibly.

This time, jokes are to a minimum, and there’s none of the petulance that sometimes dragged Aenima down to a level of just being something that rocked. Last album, Aenima, a patchy though often brilliant Industrial Metal nightmare, had a sleeve decked with poo jokes and, commendably, a lovely painting of Bill Hicks. Only there’s nothing remotely “sports” about Tool - no, they’re resolutely “old metal” imagewise – you know, namechecking Crowley, decorating their sleeves with mystical paraphernalia, and generally getting all apocalyptic on yo` ass.Īnd indeed, they’ve got doomier. Can we forgive them? I mean, like, ever? After all, as the instigators of nu-metal, they are largely responsible for Limp Bizkit and Slipknot, all that big-shorted, high testosterone sports metal malarkey. Label: BMG/Volcano Format: CD, limited CD,MC

Tool aenima album cover meaning