Other moments decry territory Pink Floyd once excavated. For those alive during the album’s creation and the band’s ascent, each person could feel what it was like to be a fan of rock and roll’s other monoliths- Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.Ĭertainly, there are moments that echo King Crimson. Most importantly it shimmers, scars and strikes at the heart of what makes individuals come together to discuss for hours on end the potential meaning of one verse while arguing the time signature of “H’s” coda during a single measure. Ænima embraces the awful and the awfully funny. What transpires for the next hour and twenty minutes looks for comparisons where few exist. Drawing from Carl Jung, Freud’s pupil, and Bill Hicks, one of the world’s greatest stand-up comics, both would have been proud of Maynard James Keenan’s lyrical use of psychotrauma and dick jokes. Landlocked rhythms and riffs forged in the mind’s shadows. “Stinkfist,” Tool’s opening descent into an album with cinematic and psychologically crippling themes throughout, provides the invocation with guitarist Adam Jones, drummer Danny Carey, and bassist Justin Chancellor like three continents converging at exactly the same time. The push-and-pull of notes panning in every direction, looped to the delayed abstraction of infinity, sped up to create momentary euphoria in the midst of perpetual disorientation. Happy 25th Anniversary to Tool’s second studio album Ænima, originally released September 17, 1996.įrippertronics introduction.

Tool aenima album cover meaning