LATERALUS

Tool´s masterpiece Lateralus came from a five years hiatus in which the band was involved in some legal battle with their label. No one knew what to expect really beacuase as usually when asked about the new album Maynard James Keenan and the guys would say ¨oh do we have a new album? what is it called? ¨. So after a million rumors and jokes from the band like posting on their website that the album title was ¨Systema Encéphale¨ it came out.

The Grudge starts the album and right away you here a completely different sound from that of Aenima, Maynard starts with some strange vocal effects, Danny Carey´s drumming in this song (and on the rest of the album) is just superb, an epic Tool song well known for Maynard´s 20 second scream near the end.

Eon Blue Apocalypse is the intro to the Patient, another beatiful track featuring excellent vocals and guitar work.

Track four is Mantra, this is Maynard squeezing his cat.

Schism was the first single of the album a really strange and awesome song with excellent bass by Justin Chancellor who mainly wrote this track, a video from this song was also released and like all Tool videos it was visually amazing.

Parabol/Parabola an amazing song divided in two parts about inmortality (seems to be the subject of the album). Every member is at he´s peak here.

Ticks and Lechees is a really heavy track featuring some excellent drumming from Carey and sick voclas from Maynard but somehow this track doesn´t fit in the album, it seems to me they HAD to release a really heavy song for fans that are more into that but that´s just my opinion, there are 3 minutes of silence in the middle of the song which i also don´t understand.

Lateralus is a Tool classic, it has an odd time signature that supposedly is related with the Fibonacci sequence and therefore the album can be arranged in different track orders to get another experience - meaning, this is the best song on the album.

Disposition/Reflection/Triad - A 20 minute epic divided into three parts different from everything Tool had done before, very spiritual lyrics and very emotional music, also Triad is Tool´s frist instrumental track ever.

Faaip de Oiad is an awfull track where a guy talks about aliens and area 51, this type of closure has become a Tool´s trademark.

Overall this is an almost perfect album, a masterpiece.