LATERALUS

Sometimes music can be all about perspective. If Lateralus was the first Tool album you heard, you could justifiably get all excited about it. Because the atmosphere, the mathematical precision, the use of dark and light passages are all tastefully done and there are some powerful tunes like The Patient, Schism, Parabola, the percussive Reflection, Triad and the title track that you can hang your affection on. And that's despite a pretty limited use of instrumentation throughout this 78-minute album.

Unfortunately for Lateralus, Aenima exists. I've never quite forgiven King Crimson's In The Wake Of Poseidon for being too close to its predecessor and I think I will always have my reservations about Lateralus. By the time this album came out (2001 after some bitter contract wrangling, I've been told), Aenima was already justifiably viewed as a landmark in prog-metal and frankly it just seems to me as if Tool is content to rest on its laurels. This isn't a bad work by any means, and in some ways, it actually surparsses its predecessor, but Aenima's the be-all and end-all of Tool as far as I'm concerned. The story starts and ends there. ... 43% on the MPV scale