Tool

[Pemulis]

What exactly did you not enjoy about it?

Pretty much all of it, really. Very little of the story resonated with me.

Concepts albums are pretty hard to do right anyway and as I said I don't find aliens very good subject matter for music. Politics either for that matter. The former comes off as hokey, the latter preachy and I don't appreciate either quality.

[Mister Squishy]

Though I have to say that it's been quite awhile since the days of my Tool obsession, I do revisit their records from time to time and they'll always be really important, formative records for me. I remember 10, 000 Days being my most anticipated record (it probably still is to this day, matched maybe only by With Teeth or the upcoming A.C. record, but that's for another thread), and like many others, being totally underwhelmed after the first listen. Ironically, it's the one that I find myself coming back to most often now. What I first took to be haphazard or muddled in terms of production I eventually came to love - it's so visceral and dense and unhinged in a way that Lateralus is not. Then there's that whole trance-y, monastic desert vibe (Wings, Intension) that pulls the record into some other place, some deep reservoir of history or memory. Or something.



Ok, fine. But then there's Lost Keys / Rosetta Stoned. Aliens and acid trips? What the fuck is this? It just seems so disjointed, completely jarring the flow of the record. More than anything, it was MJK's lyrics that I couldn't wrap my head around. As Pemulis and others have said, it all just seems so arbitrary and SILLY. Humor has always been a part of it, sure, but to make this 20 minute (or whatever) meandering gag the centerpiece to an otherwise pretty cool record? Let's try to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Warning: This is not an attempt to fit Rosetta Stoned into some all-encompassing theory of the unity of 10, 000 Days. It's a disparate record, for sure. But maybe there's a way to think about it so that it doesn't ruin the record, for those of you haters out there.

Anyone remember the early pre-release press for 10, 000 Days, when the band described it as their blues record, a reflection of the disillusionment that surrounds post-911 America, personal loss, a kind of epitaph or mourning for dead ideals? Think of the kinds of things they'd talk about in interviews before, often in earnest, things like subversive politics, the occult, collective unconscious, etc. If Lateralus represents at least the possibility of transcendence and enlightenment, then I think 10, 000 Days, and RS most radically, turns these ideals right on their heads. The world in 10, 000 Days is (for the most part) more violent, but also more blunt, more cynical and brutal. It's got a sadness, too, beneath it all.

And then there's the Rosetta Stoned suite, smack in the middle of the whole thing. In place of the old, sweeping intensities and ideas and conflicts, we have stream-of-consciousness schizo-babble, brand names, bodily functions, celebrities. This is a guy who believes he's been offered a profound insight, a privileged position from which he can access the answer to our collective woes. He's so close. But he can't remember what he saw, can't say for sure whether it was even real. The message is lost, or at least, it can't be captured in any coherent or communicable way. He's alone. The pieces don't fit, you could say, and maybe they never did. Could there be anything more at odds with the lofty aspirations of Lateralus than those last lines of RS, repeatedly bludgeoning us with this record's new message? "Don't know. Won't know." It's self-parody, for sure, or maybe self-criticism, a long, level re-evaluation of the kinds of grand sentiments that belonged to more expansive, optimistic times. In this sense it's a serious song, too, and pretty brilliant, at least conceptually.

It's not hard to see why some fans are turned off. In a real, obvious way, the song can be read as a caricature of the band's fan, eagerly deciphering the latest metaphors and clues, fitting this or that piece into some larger messianic web of meanings. While in reality, he's just fucked up, dreaming, shitting his (figurative?) pants, losing himself in symbols and signs.

Lots of words spent on a Tool song. And maybe not even a great Tool song, comparatively. Certainly unique in their body of work. But I think there's more that we can say about it than, "they ran out of ideas and wrote about drugs and UFOs". Not that anyone said that, it just seems to be a general sentiment.

And howdy! Long time lurker, first time poster. Glad to see this place up and running again. And Pemulis, I'm glad to see another DFW nut on board.

[exilajei]

Though I have to say that it's been quite awhile since the days of my Tool obsession, I do revisit their records from time to time and they'll always be really important, formative records for me. I remember 10, 000 Days being my most anticipated record (it probably still is to this day, matched maybe only by With Teeth or the upcoming A.C. record, but that's for another thread), and like many others, being totally underwhelmed after the first listen. Ironically, it's the one that I find myself coming back to most often now. What I first took to be haphazard or muddled in terms of production I eventually came to love - it's so visceral and dense and unhinged in a way that Lateralus is not. Then there's that whole trance-y, monastic desert vibe (Wings, Intension) that pulls the record into some other place, some deep reservoir of history or memory. Or something.

This is pretty much how I feel as well. A few months after 10,000 Days came out I sort of just stopped listening to Tool completely, which lasted right up until last week, where for whatever reason I found myself starting to really get back into their stuff. As it stands right now, I'd probably say 10,000 Days is my favourite, with Lateralus still being their overall best.

As for Rosetta Stoned sticking out in the tracklist of 10,000 Days, I think that rings true with songs off of pretty much every album these guys have ever done... but I find Ticks & Leeches a lot more jarring and out of place on Lateralus than I do Rosetta Stoned.

[Mister Squishy]

I couldn't agree more about Ticks & Leeches. I recently picked up Lateralus on vinyl but haven't listened to it yet because my turntable bit the dust. Gotta get that shit fixed. The tracklist is slightly different, so I'm interested to see how the balance shifts with Ticks & Leeches being a little earlier. I can imagine it being pretty cool, with DC's crazy triplet part at the end of Schism breaking into the chaos that is Ticks & Leeches. What a beast.

[seasonsinthesky]

^ methinks you've been misinformed about the tracklist changes — the only change is "Disposition" being put after "Parabola." in fact, "Ticks" opens side C, so you won't be hearing it following "Schism" unless you lift the needle before "Parabol" starts!