It was 2000, and the pair were recording vocals for The Grudge, the song that would open Tool\u2019s third album, Lateralus<\/a>. It was a fittingly intense moment. When it finally dropped on May 15, 2001, Lateralus marked the end of a gruelling five-year period for the band, during which time they\u2019d been pinioned by a crushing legal battle with their then-label that had left their future anything but certain.<\/p>\n Latest Videos From Louder<\/p>\n Lateralus was a huge release of energy and emotion \u2013 a 79-minute, spiritually charged behemoth, bursting with dizzying time signatures, seismic riffs and themes of isolation, vulnerability and connection. Twenty-five years on, its impact can still be felt.<\/p>\n Tool – The Grudge (Live DVD 2017) – YouTube Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n In 1997, while touring in support of their second album, 1996\u2019s platinum-selling breakout \u00c6nima, Tool were slapped with a lawsuit from their label, Volcano Entertainment, alleging contract violations. It was the start of a war of attrition that brought on total creative paralysis, as much a psychological battle as a legal one.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a very grating period, having this \u2018lawsuit fog\u2019 hanging over us for years,\u201d bassist Justin Chancellor explained in a 2001 interview on MTV2. \u201cBut in a way, it forced us to look inward and really solidify as a unit. We had to fight to even be allowed to create, and I think you can hear that struggle and the eventual release of it in the music. It wasn\u2019t just about making a record anymore; it was about survival.\u201d<\/p>\n “Being the survivors gave us a certain freedom.”<\/p>\n Danny Carey<\/p>\n By the end of 1998, agreements were drawn up and the legal drama ended, freeing the band to return to the studio, which they did with a heightened sense of purpose.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a couple records under our belt and lots of touring,\u201d guitarist Adam Jones told Revolver in 2022. \u201cBy that time, we knew our limits. We knew what stuff we could push. We were a well-oiled machine. And we knew each other. And there were things we learned about each other on that record that are pivotal to this day.\u201d<\/p>\n The musical landscape had changed radically since Tool emerged at the start of the 1990s. Many of the bands they\u2019d once shared stages with had splintered or split.<\/p>\n \u201cAlice In Chains, Helmet, Soundgarden, Nirvana, and now Rage [Against The Machine],\u201d said drummer Danny Carey in 2001. \u201cIt\u2019s really kind of amazing that all of them are gone. It\u2019s a strange feeling to look around and realise we\u2019re still here. But I think that sense of being the survivors gave us a certain freedom. We didn\u2019t feel like we had to fit into a scene anymore, because the scene didn\u2019t really exist. We just had to answer to ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n What to read next<\/p>\n Now more than ever, Tool were marching to their own complicated beat. At the dawn of the 2000s, progressive rock seemed like a bloated relic of a bygone age. A handful of groups \u2013 Dream Theater chief among them \u2013 were flying the flag for complex, ambitious music, but bands and the public alike seemed largely immune to prog\u2019s charms. Why listen to old dudes in capes when you\u2019ve got Korn<\/a> and Limp Bizkit<\/a>?<\/p>\n By contrast, Tool cast their gaze back to the progressive giants of the 70s, particularly King Crimson. Led by the exacting, innovative visionary Robert Fripp, Crimson were the architects of a disciplined, professorial strain of music that prioritised knotty polyrhythms and structural subversion over traditional riffs. With songs such as 1969\u2019s proto-prog metal classic 21st Century Schizoid Man, they proved heavy music could be high-art, trading musical excess for a clinical, forward-thinking precision that redefined the boundaries of the genre.<\/p>\n \u201cWe pulled quite a bit of King Crimson into what we\u2019re doing,\u201d Maynard explained in 2001, adding: \u201cI think we\u2019ve brought in a much more vulnerable, emotional element that was missing in King Crimson. Which is good. I would hope that that\u2019s something that they could recognise and\u2026 be the master in the corner that nods silently: \u2018Very good work.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTool were one of the greatest bands to take influences from so many different styles and blend them into something completely unique,\u201d says David Bottrill.<\/p>\n \u201cI think you hear King Crimson in the songwriting structure, in the way that Adam builds his tone, and in the way Danny listened to both [King Crimson drummers] Bill Bruford and Pat Mastelotto. It\u2019s also the Led Zeppelin influence Adam had from doing No Quarter [the 1973 Zeppelin song covered by Tool during the \u00c6nima sessions that was eventually released in 2000]. Working on those sonics and that structure amalgamated into what Lateralus became.\u201d<\/p>\n \n (Image credit: Scarlet Page)<\/p>\n Tool began work on the follow-up to \u00c6nima in the autumn of 2000. They took a different approach to the way they\u2019d made the previous record: where the writing process for \u00c6nima had seen Maynard forging melodies and lyrics alongside the music being created by Adam, Danny and Justin, this time the instrumental trio began poring through four years\u2019 worth of riffs, melodies and ideas while Maynard more or less left them to it.<\/p>\n \u201cThey would have a whiteboard and go, \u2018OK, well, let\u2019s go from Riff A to B to C,\u2019\u201d explains David Bottrill, who had produced \u00c6nima, and was on board once again for Lateralus.<\/p>\n \u201cThey would just work things around, try many different options of arrangements to see which ones felt the best.\u201d<\/p>\n Maynard, for his part, spent much of 2000 on the road with his side-project A Perfect Circle while his bandmates worked. His stance, as David recalls, was one of blunt pragmatism:<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Look, you guys get the arrangements sorted out\u2026 send it to me when you\u2019re closer, then I\u2019ll work on the lyrics.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The songs that resulted achieved a rare balance between technicality and humanity, where the intricate musical arrangements never choked out the raw, visceral pulse at the centre of it all. Thematically, Lateralus ditched the cynical edge that had partly defined \u00c6nima and their 1992 debut EP Opiate for a radical, wide-eyed vulnerability. Maynard framed the album as a \u201cspiritual roadmap\u201d designed to transform toxic energy into transcendence.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I have a spiritual side, it\u2019s about trying to be as honest as I can,\u201d he noted at the time. \u201cThe one thing that was missing from that very heady, artistic progressive rock approach was the emotional\u2026 we didn\u2019t seem very \u2018vulnerable.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n That approach was encapsulated by The Grudge, the album\u2019s eight-and-a-half-minute opening track and the song on which Maynard unleashes that monumental scream heard by David Bottrill and a cat.<\/p>\n Lyrically, it\u2019s the singer\u2019s warning against what he called the \u201clead weight\u201d of grievances that drag the soul under. It\u2019s seemingly loaded with both alchemical and astrological symbolism: Tool-watchers have suggested the line \u2018Saturn ascends\u2019 refers to the time it takes Saturn to orbit the sun, around 29.5 years.<\/p>\n Danny was like, \u2018987 is a number of the Fibonacci. That\u2019s really cool.\u2019\u2026 We told Maynard, and he went, \u2018Oh, my god, I\u2019ll write my lyrics like that<\/p>\n Adam Jones<\/p>\n Maynard has never revealed the specific significance of that line, though he did say that the track was a conscious decision to choose \u201cthe transformation of negative energy into positive energy\u201d over the easy payoff of rage.<\/p>\n Musically, Lateralus dispenses with any remnants of the marginally more straightforward alt metal<\/a> sound with which Tool made their name in favour of music that is complex and expansive.<\/p>\n Schism is defined by a coiling, serpentine bassline and a constant rotation of odd time signatures, The Patient uses restraint as a weapon, its slow burn mirroring the very process of the existential survival that birthed the record, while the transition from the ethereal Parabol into the earth-shaking Parabola remains one of heavy music\u2019s most devastating payoffs, its tension slowly building until it has no choice but to explode with the force of a neutron bomb.<\/p>\n The mid-album firestorm Ticks & Leeches hits like a high-velocity exorcism, pushing Maynard to a level of vocal strain that purportedly sidelined his ability to sing for weeks. The album\u2019s final descent is the 25-minute suite of Disposition, Reflection and Triad, which trade sheer force for a trancelike, Jungian exploration of ego-death and spiritual realignment.<\/p>\n Beyond the sprawling song structures, the band still left room for moments of eccentric experimentation. This manifested in the album\u2019s atmospheric segues, most notably on the track Mantra. Though it sounds like a deep, meditative hum, Maynard later revealed to the Japanese magazine Buzz that the recording was actually a \u201ctreat\u201d for fans: the sound of him squeezing his Siamese cat, slowed down until the animal\u2019s protest became a cavernous, ambient pulse.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t the only found sound to make the cut. Elsewhere, Danny Carey growled through a tube to simulate the chanting of Tibetan monks for Parabol, and the album\u2019s closer, Faaip de Oiad, utilises a sampled 1997 radio call to Coast To Coast AM from a man claiming to be a panicked, former Area 51 employee \u2013 a paranoid interlude that tapped into \u201cthe sheer frequency of human desperation\u201d, as described by Maynard.<\/p>\n But the album\u2019s most famous Easter Egg is embedded in the album\u2019s title track. The Fibonacci sequence is an ancient mathematical pattern in which each successive number is the sum of the two that precede it. Somehow, Tool found a way to work it into one of their songs.<\/p>\n \u201cJustin brought in this amazing bass riff,\u201d Adam recalled. \u201cHe said, \u2018The first part\u2019s in 9, the second part\u2019s in 8 and the last part\u2019s in 7.\u2019 Danny was like, \u2018[987] is a number of the Fibonacci. That\u2019s really cool.\u2019\u2026 We told Maynard, and he went, \u2018Oh, my god, I\u2019ll write my lyrics like that!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The singer\u2019s vocals follow this pattern, each syllable representing a number in the series. It\u2019s a very clever arrangement that has, over time, been wildly mythologised and over-emphasised by those hungry for esoteric secrets. Maynard himself has spent years trying to deflate that particular balloon.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like I kind of pulled a very pedestrian, sophomoric move,\u201d he told podcaster Joe Rogan in 2017. \u201cIt\u2019s good to let people know about [Fibonacci] but it was kind of a dick joke, in a way. I could do better.\u201d<\/p>\n Tool – Lateralus (Live DVD 2014) – YouTube Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n Intellectual dick jokes notwithstanding, the album sounded like nothing else that had come before. It was closer in spirit to Radiohead\u2019s Kid A, released the previous year, than any contemporary metal band.<\/p>\n Just like Kid A \u2013 another album that refused to play by the music industry\u2019s rules \u2013 Lateralus proved that mainstream success didn\u2019t have to come at the expense of intelligence and vision.<\/p>\n It perfectly captured the intent of the record: the idea that we are more than just these meat-suits<\/p>\n Maynard James Keenan<\/p>\n Yet Tool weren\u2019t completely exempt from having to play the game. Schism was released as a single at the start of 2001, a taste of what was to come. Even so, it was a defiant choice for radio.<\/p>\n \u201cI found it very hard when we came to pick a single,\u201d Justin told Prog magazine in 2021. \u201cAdam and Danny immediately were like, \u2018Schism is the hit, that\u2019s the one, everybody is going to love it.\u2019 I was honestly really on the opposite end of that. \u2018Really? It\u2019s so odd.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The gamble paid off, with the song\u2019s success amplified by a disquieting stop-motion video directed by Adam that featured no footage of the band. Justin credited this to the group\u2019s refusal to sign away their autonomy, noting that the guitarist\u2019s background in special effects allowed them to ignore the industry\u2019s demand for a typical rock promo.<\/p>\n \u201cNobody gets to tell us what to do at all,\u201d Justin said. \u201cWe never felt under pressure to make a typical rock video with the band jumping around onstage.\u201d<\/p>\n Nor was the album\u2019s packaging comparable to anything their contemporaries were doing. For the artwork, they enlisted artist Alex Grey, whose anatomical, translucent illustrations \u2013 rendered in a multi-layered, clear plastic booklet \u2013 mirrored the album\u2019s obsession with peeling back layers of the self to reveal the luminous spiritual core beneath.<\/p>\n \u201cAlex has a way of visualising the things we were trying to articulate lyrically,\u201d explained Maynard. \u201cIt\u2019s that sense of a \u2018spiritual roadmap\u2019. When you look at the layers of the Lateralus booklet, you\u2019re literally peeling back the physical to find the light inside. It perfectly captured the intent of the record: the idea that we are more than just these meat-suits.”<\/p>\n When Lateralus itself landed in May 2001, it dashed any hopes or expectations for an \u00c6nima Pt. 2. Critics were predictably split. While Metal Hammer praised its \u201cproper serious heavyweight rock\u201d as being on par with Led Zeppelin\u2019s equally epic Physical Graffiti or Pink Floyd\u2019s The Wall, chronically petulant hipster music website Pitchfork issued a baffling 1.9\/10.<\/p>\n By that point, Tool were critic-proof anyway. This sprawling, cerebral monolith demolished the competition, debuting at No.1 on the Billboard 200 and selling a jaw-dropping 550,000 copies in its first week, beating the likes of Missy Elliott and Destiny\u2019s Child.<\/p>\n Lateralus redefined what heavy music can be.<\/p>\n David Bottrill<\/p>\n In the years since its release, Lateralus has taken on a life beyond the band. Fans had proposed alternate track sequences, dived deep into the album\u2019s vast numerical realms, and come up with some truly head-scratching theories, like the one claiming the band wrote Lateralus along to the film The Passion Of The Christ, a movie released three full years after the record.<\/p>\n Adam recalls first hearing about that theory from a fan email: \u201cI wrote her back and said, \u2018Cool. You figured it out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The factual impossibility was beside the point. The engagement wasn\u2019t. Within the scene, Lateralus emerged as a beacon for what prog metal<\/a> could become. While some bands simply mimicked Tool\u2019s technical quirks to infinitely lesser effect, acts such as Mastodon took the album\u2019s spirit of ambition to forge their own conceptual paths on albums like Leviathan<\/a>.<\/p>\n By clearing a space for atmosphere and experimentation, Tool provided a vital blueprint for the challenging music made by the likes of Gojira, The Ocean and Tesseract.<\/p>\n \u201cLateralus redefined what heavy music can be,\u201d says David Bottrill. \u201cThere\u2019s nobody that sounds quite like them. I can tell you, you\u2019ve got no idea how many demos I get that are pastiches of what they do, and nobody comes close.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps Danny Carey himself put it best: \u201cIt still makes my hair stand on end when I listen to it alone in the dark.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.loudersound.com\/media\/img\/Louder_logo_v1a_black_on_white.svg\"){kind=logo}
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