TOOL: Ænima

Produced by David Botterill

Released: 1996

It's hard to be objective about the things you really like. I've attempted to review this album several times in the past but I've found it difficult because it's such a favourite. Put it this way: I bought this when it was first released so I wouldn't miss out on the lenticular packaging and then proceeded to play it every day for the next three years or so until I almost wore out the disc. That's not a bad achievement for a person who, upon seeing Tool live eighteen months before, had thought they were one of the most boring acts he'd ever seen.

On Ænima, Tool expanded their geek-rock oeuvre into the realm of dark, thought-provoking progressive rock in such a massive and successful way it's arguable whether they have been able to match or better it since. Using King Crimson as a rough guide, Adam Jones, Danny Carey and Justin Chancellor set down an often stark and brooding musical foundation upon which Maynard Keenan builds his narratives on philosophy, psychology, genetics and false martyrdom drawn from the likes of Carl Jung and Bill Hicks. Eventually, they all meld together in the sweeping closing epic "Third Eye", an expansive miasma of mind-altering substances, metaphysics and epistemology. And Ænima is very much Keenan's album, with the sheer intensity of his vocal delivery throughout being the key factor in its success. With any less of a talent, the utter audacity and arrogance of Tool's vision would most likely fall on its face.

Still, the rest of the band pull their weight. Jones churns out the mosh-groove from Hell in the latter part of "Stinkfist", Chancellor adds a suitably throbbing bass line under Keenan's assorted rants and whispers in the title track and the brilliant Carey's drumming is jaw-dropping everywhere. He is Tool's other true star, filling every hole with a subtle, clever fill or boosting the sound with an assortment of polyrhythms. All together, the band's music here is as moving as it is articulate: "Hooker With a Penis" is outright anger, "Ænema" pure cynicism and "Eulogy's" damning indictment against L. Ron Hubbard is particularly passionate.

At times however, Tool clearly overplay their hand, and it's difficult to tell whether this is intentional or not. While the sinister interlude "Message to Harry Manback" (a real answering machine message left for a former room-mate of Keenan's) is creepily effective, and "(-) Ions" is a decent build-up to the ambient intro of "Third Eye", most of the others only break the flow of the album; "Useful Idiot" is so short it seems to serve no purpose. Some may argue that without them Ænima is in some way less effective, but careful experimentation with a CD player's "skip" button will show that this really isn't the case.

No discussion of a Tool album is complete without making mention of its packaging, and on the threshold of an era where downloads and personal MP3 players were threatening to make even the CD itself completely redundant a band as pretentious as Tool still understood that powerful music should have great artwork. Hence, Ænima featured a lenticular cover with a booklet that included three alternative images: the regular "Smokebox" with animated smoke and eyes could be interchanged with another that showed a female contortionist apparently performing cunnilingus on herself (while the band watches) or another of some kind of monstrous reptile with a eye capable of 360º rotation. The tray also featured an animation of California being inundated after an earthquake, another homage to Bill Hicks' "Arizona Bay" routine. These days Ænima just comes as a standard package, so even though my copy doesn't play properly anymore, I'm in no hurry to update it.

Ænima is a dark, powerful and moving album from a band that was outstanding for its time; time seems to have caught up with Tool now that progressive music is fashionable again but Ænima itself remains as timeless as the day it appeared.

1. Stinkfist
2. Eulogy
3. H
4. Useful Idiot
5. Forty Six & 2
6. Message to Harry Manback
7. Hooker With a Penis
8. Intermission
9. jimmy
10. Die Eier von Satan
11. Pushit
12. Cesaro Summability
13. Ænema
14. (-) Ions
15. Third Eye

Rating: 98%