The 26th Best Album of the 90s: Tool - "Ænima" (1996)

Tool's second album, an improvement over their great debut Undertow (1993).

On Ænima (not "Aenima") the band took everything one step further and applied the "it's got more of everything" idea. The songs are even longer, even more progressive, even hippier, the heavy parts are even heavier, the soft parts are even softer, the lyrics make even less sense and their sense of humor is even stranger.

I dare the last part is the one that gets lost the most. The most rabid Tool fans always crack me up, they assume everything thing the band does means something huge, because why would a band as deep and profound and fucking hell near druidic joke around? They never seem to realise the band jumps on any opportunity to take the piss out the fans who take Tool too seriously.

My favorite example of Tool fans taking things too far is this discussion over at SongMeanings.com where douchenozzels (who probably wear MC5 shirts and ironic glasses) debate over the meaning of the track Useful Idiot, which consists of 39 seconds of a scratched vinyl record skipping.

Someone who picked the handle "Offatwork" in a failed attempt to convince the rest of us he could ever land a job offered these priceless insights:

Well since the sound is repeating itself, i would think it describes the mundane, thoughtless activities we do in a country to make it run. Or it might also mean that we just blindly go through life, and the only thing that is not stopping us is the beating of our own heart.

Or it could be that thought in the back of your head that you first shrug off as nothing but eventually builds up and festers in your mind. It's like a person saying, "No it can't be, can it?"Nontheless, since it grows louder, it probably means that there is about to be change and it is going to be an epihony.

Or maybe "Progrocker" is on to something:

I think it is about world as of now. There is so much crap, people fighting, people obssessed with material things, there is nothing useful or meaningful in the world anymore.

Someone kill me. Kill me now.

Another example of their cooky sense of humor would be the "other albums available from Tool" exhibited in the booklet of the European version. My favorite is "The Other White Meat" with dolphins on the cover. Click to enlarge:



Well, there's not much else to add. Except that the follow-up Lateralus is even better, but that disqualifies itself from the list by coming out in 2001.

(mp3) Tool - Eulogy
(mp3) Tool - Forty six & 2
(mp3) Tool - Hooker with a penis (recommended!)

Buy Ænima @ Amazon.com.

Eulogy live in 1997: