This album fully deserves the 5 star rating. The sound production is second to none and the tracks and performances by all the band members are first class. It's difficult to choose Leeches' are all stand out tracks.
The latter also has one of the best vocal performances you will ever hear. How anybody can put so much into a vocal performance as Keenan does on this track amazes me. If you like the heavier side of prog music then this album is an absolute must have.
Marvellous. Posted Sunday, July 04, 2004, 17:12 EST |
The masterpiece. This is as close to perfection as you could ever imagine.
Tool continued with this for their follow up in 2001. The band have perfected every little detail for "Lateralus" and was well worth the wait. Lateralus flows like a concept album and is helped to do this by its linking songs.
These are short instrumentals that help link together the main songs. These linking songs include "Eon Blue Apocalypse", "Mantra", "Parabol" and "Disposition".This technique was also used on Aenima but it ended up dragging the album down.
Here tool have perfected that technique and it does wonders for the album and adds to the progressive feel. production and musicianship here is unbelievable. The album kicks off with the simplistic long but the band pull it off well.
The guitars and drums start to build up and progress continuosly to keep the listener satisfied throughout. This song includes one of the to make way for Maynard's epic scream which lasts 30 seconds long! Although this may not sound very impressive, it is near impossible to hold one note whilst screaming for such a long time.
Of course this is what makes Maynard such a great singer as he can do it easily and get his moment in the spotlight. "The Patient" is one of the most beautiful songs the band have ever done. It build ups brilliantly with an overall mellow scale to it, again showing the different sides of tools vocals, guitar skills and drumming techniques.
"Schism" is one of the bands best songs and is probably the easiest to listen to as pretty short (for a tool song). It is nice to see a blend of acoustic and tortured vocals progress into an agressive outro. The middle section here is brilliant with it's fiddley guitar effects.
"Parabol" and "Parabola" are almost opposites of each other, using similar lyrics and guitar pieces. The sheer volume of Parabola is absolutely incredible and will leave the listener in a sort of euphoria for the whole of the track. This could not have been achieved without the quiet introduction to the song.
Danny Carey steps into the spotlight next with his ferocious drumming on "Ticks and Leeches". This alongside with Maynards angry vocals and adams heavy riffage creates the perfect kick in the balls song, giving the album an everlasting sense of balance. The middle section mellows out and leaves the listener wondering what the band are building up to, when it finally explodes it is well worth the wait and will be hard not to enjoy.
and are beautiful pieces (for tool anyway). The album closes with a montage instrumental, "Triad", that experiments with pieces of music from previous songs, including "Third Eye" from aenima. The last track is confusing and often scary to the listener but it serves as a good closing track and leaves you wondering if the 75 minutes of heaven you just listened to really happened or just a strange dream.
Lateralus is a mysterious album and a masterpiece. It puzzles the mind to think how perfect this album is and how a band can play THAT well together! Unfortunately, Tool will probably never be able to better this album but they have already proved themselves to be one of the best bands in the world.
Posted Sunday, July 04, 2004, 19:01 EST |
Though Aenima is slightly better, Lateralus is Tool's most prog album, as well as their most mature up to this point. The band went through a lot in the 5 year break between albums, engaging in a lawsuit with their record label, and Maynard James Keenan fronting A Perfect Circle. They still sound distinctly like Tool, yet it's clear that they've evolved.
Maynard's angsty screams are still every bit as effective as they once were, more progressive than other Tool albums? Well, only 2 songs that aren't connected to the song after or before them are less than 6:49 in length, and there are numerous suites and the like. The most noteworthy is "Disposition", "Reflection" and "Triad", which were originally written as one song, but then broken up into three seperate ones for the album.
But that's not all, as "Parabol" and "Parabola" flow into one another perfectly, "Eon Blue Apocalypse" is a pretty obvious intro to "The Patient", and the title track has one of the most bizzare time signatures you'll ever find. But what about the Well, for an album that is 78 minutes in length, Lateralus manages to never be boring. album's hardest rocker, while to not like gorgeous tracks like "The Patient" would be quite difficult.
"Schism" was the first single for the album, and surprisingly fared fairly dark "Parabol" is chilling, and leads into it's heavy metal counterpart "Parabola", which has to be one of the CD's hilights. These two songs were combined for another one of the band's fantastic music videos, which unfortunately got no airplay because of it's length. "Ticks and Leeches" is the only song on here that's even remotely week, mainly due to the annoying vocal style.
Fortunately, Maynard has vowed the band will never play it live, simply because of the havoc recording it provided for his voice. However, Danny Carey steals the show with some of his best drumming we've yet heard. And plus, the second half is completely crazy and contains some hard hitting guitar work from Adam Jones.
The title track is probably the album's best song, combining a great melody with one of the oddest time signatures you'll find in a song. Plus there's a great song. "Disposition" is one of the most mellow songs this band (or any band for that matter) has done, and will probably surprise many people.
The track is gorgeous in it's minimalism, and leads perfectly into the ghostly 11 minutes of "Reflection", which has to be one of the band's more surreal songs. Like most of their tracks though, it manages to have a fantastic ending, and some interesting guitar work throughout. This leads extent.
Danny is given all kinds of room to go crazy on this track, although Adam Jones' pounding guitar is really what drives it along. He does what he ususally does attempt. When Justin Chancellor comes in on bass is when the song really takes off and reaches it's best moments.
It really provides an apt finish to this fantastic album. However, the actual end of the album is "Faaip De Oiad", which is a clip from a radio show, on which someone calls in and rants hysterically about how aliens are invading us, and are among our population. It doesn't sound noteworthy when described, but How Tool could have followed up Aenima was beyond everyone, but they did it, and they did it fantastically.
While Lateralus doesn't quite reach the genius that Aenima did, it's another brilliant addition to the Tool catalogue, and should by checked out by Posted Tuesday, August 17, 2004, 19:42 EST |
Well, it seems that it is an expressed wish of Maynard James Keenan only to conceive masterpieces, so we have to patiently wait 5 years for an album to be in the stores. So Lateralus is no exception, it is in the same level of the previous masterpiece Aenima. Comparatively, Lateralus has explored a bit more the progressive vein of their previous release.
They achieved it quite well, managing the pressure of not to disappoint the fans. In my opinion, they surpassed it.
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