From Amazon.co.uk
The epic scope of Tool's excellent third album,
Lateralus, could well spell a whole new era for metal. To many casual rock fans, frontman Maynard James Keenan is probably better known as the vocalist in the more MTV-friendly
A Perfect Circle but it's indisputably Keenan's main group--art-metal pioneers Tool--that have reshaped the rock landscape most radically. Operating somewhere beyond the parameters of their closest peers
Metallica and
Jane's Addiction, Tool is the sound of metal at its most sprawling, complex, ambitious and progressive. But while the group's third album--the long-awaited
Lateralus--deals with subjects as obtuse at the return of Saturn's orbit and Keenan's fascination with the occult works of Aleister Crowley, this is not simply the sound of pompous prog-rock given a Millennial makeover. Why? Mainly because Tool never let the concept swallow the sheer, gigantic scope of this music--from the brooding, dark instrumental passages and explosive rhythmic tension of the eight-minute opener "The Grudge" to the precise, angular mathematic construction of "Schism". It's true,
Lateralus might be a bit much for the pogo-friendly Blink 182 fan in your life but if there's any justice in the world, this fantastic work will do for metal what Radiohead's
OK Computer did for indie-rock. The boundaries have fallen and Tool have new horizons in sight.
--Louis Pattison
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