LATERALUS

Tool's first fully prog album. The first two were not prog at all and the third was inconsistent in regards to it, with the progressive stuff being saved (aside from Eulogy) for the second half of the album. Here, it's all over the place... aside from the finale, anyway. It's not a Tool studio album if they aren't showing their hate for their fans by shoving filler in, right?

It's the first fully prog and the first cohesive one. Could argue that it has the least filler of the bunch too. However, I find Ænima to be the better of the two albums. Why? Ænima just has better tracks when they're not doing the filler. Much of the second half of Lateralus is fairly boring to be (excluding Triad) and you just couldn't say that about Ænima's non-filler tracks. Only The Mars Volta rivals these guys in filler, I swear. At least Tool doesn't tack theirs on to the starts and ends of their regular tracks, I guess (see track four on Frances The Mute for details).

Anyway, occasional boredom aside, this is still a strong album. The album's first half is nearly five star worthy. If they inexpicably put out a second EP and just included tracks 1-7 from here, it would be worth about 4.75. But that's not the case and the second half is there. So it's knocked down to about 4.25. I guess that means it's a four.