Welcome weary net-traveler, have a seat and enjoy some of this ombience.
Let's do a quick check around the room to set the mood, shall we? On the left, we notice a small silver pipe filled with some of the PNW's finest green. To the right, two black candles burning so effortlessly into the night. Immediately below those fire breathing dragons, we find a green bottle exhbiting a small bit of frost-bite...it's name; Beck's. We begin this moment with the background music currently filling your inner ear canal....those thunderous booms......growls of pure angst...swirling riffs of a guitar.....this is Tool.
Tool is consisted of the following intellectuals:
The cover of this newly anticipated album, from a group that mere words cannot do justice for, brings one book to mind; the QABBALAH. The lettering used to pull off the bleeding of the words 'lateralus' describes a time when men still believed in a higher power then themselves. We slide the jewel case out of it's film-like wrapper. We notice an image very reminiscent of Alex Greys' work. The human body exposed to it's purest form, a being with no shell....no rough exterior...no skin. The downward spiral into the middle of this being, roadmapping the path our inner souls travel to communicate with our human body. A quick check of the back cover reassures our previous notion, the illustrations were done by Alex Grey.
The angelic moaning of Rev. Maynard James Keenan catches your ear...surrounded by riffs from a guitar that brings to mind a demon flying around this angelic being; giving it its angst, teasing it to feel it's own hatred boil within.
The tracks are as follows:
The song that catches your ear is that of Schism, the one that has received so much air play as of lately. Wow, we sit back and realize that we've just cruised through the first four songs on the album and have achieved the perfect place in time and space. The world is ours......we feel its power...its pull to us; but we have no time for that now. We're lost in the realm created by this band; the melodic chords of the guitar, the plucks of the bass strings resonating in our head. In this realm, we hear the words of a thousand prophets whose time we will never know; only heard/experienced through the driving rage of the band, the voice of the singer. In this realm, the reality of demons and angels playing amongst us exists and is plainly laid upon the naked eye for consumption. The peaks in the growls being exorcised from the demon of the guitar....it pulls us in....feeling the vibration from the ringing of the town bell in the background....Maynard speaks...."sense of compasion". This realm is taking hold now, oh wait... or is it the smoke?
You feel the ground slipping in front of you....you can't quite keep your footing.....your feet are being stretched in front of you for your viewing pleasure. You reach out in hopes of pulling them back under you, no use. Relax, let the soul communicate with your body, let your body listen as every nerve ending contained within you screams with joy. Once communication is achieved, we feel the flow of our own blood through our veins; weird how it has taken on the pulsating rhythm of the bass guitar in the background.
Pullback, take into account what we just achieved. Our soul communicated with our body. Tool; not just a band that is gauking for the quick buck, the 10 seconds of fame granted from the MTV echelon that absorb the diatribe called TRL. A band that is trying to communicate something to the masses. Open your ears, take listen.......our path is shown to us here.
This is where we part company my welcomed guest.
With this; these words, that are escaping the grasp of the rhythm section, stay fresh in your mind:
"Hope this is what you wanted;
Hope this is what you had in mind;
Cause this is what your getting."
"Question authority; think for yourself." -- Timothy Leary
