algol

Pretty mind-boggling. Sick and twisted. Liked it, maybe.

It seems to me that this reading from @[proggen_ait94] is quite lucid and among the most balanced and, considering the first listens, shareable things one can say about the album.
- True that in terms of lyrics, we are at the lowest point, and let's spare ourselves the pointless lectures on the genesis of such a mess, to the point that Keenan must end up under the subway is an axiom recognized even in all advanced mathematics texts.
- True that it’s prog. Nu-prog (caz docet), of that kind of prog that personally doesn’t induce my testicles to a phase of irreversible introversion until regressing to a blastula.
- True that the sounds, accompanied by a vocal performance that, inevitably, can no longer produce epic gasps like that of The Grudge, have settled into a more "psychedelic," hypnotic tribalism. Exploring shores already proposed but with greater nuances.
- All while maintaining the same perfection in sounds and a rhythmic session adequate to guarantee quite rigid erections destined to be repeated over time.
With great satisfaction.
We will see how it evolves. I also think there won't be much more to say beyond what has already been expressed. Not in terms of sound upheavals or proposals, I imagine.
Then again, if in the future they wanted to revisit formulas already explored, it wouldn’t disgust me, you know ... I mean, we’re not talking about a band that has served us the same old soup every year.
And to be honest, with this latest work, they have changed the soup after thirteen years; it may be liked more or less, but they cannot be accused of stagnation; it is a band in undisputed evolution. With equally undeniable internal problems that have affected it, of course, but we could use more stuff like this.
But also stuff similar to Lateralus or Aenema, unless one of you can point out some brilliant epigone that, to date, has been able to gather and relaunch its artistic legacy.
For me, not the best work. But an incredible work, with a depth that is hard to match when I look around.

The usual page of Pinè. Cultured, passionate, perfect.

I would like to add that the added value of the album release lies in this and other soon-to-come polemical scrolls. It’s been since my first review eight hundred years ago on the rugby match (briefly provocative) that a tendonitis hasn’t flared up in my knuckles from scrolling through all the comments. I have long since lost track of the structure of it all. Just like in a prog piece!

Anyway, I haven't listened to it yet. But reading comments that talk about the album as if they had chopped off Carey's arms is starting to make me nervous.

Bah. In my opinion, haste and the desire to swim against the tide at all costs are terrible advisors. I'm waiting to listen to it properly, certainly not from leaked files. As for the thesis repeated to exhaustion in the review, there's plenty to disagree with. Tool have always worked despite Keenan.

But isn't it coming out on the 30th?

Terrible. Never tolerated. The anti-bourgeois invective is noble and here for me the good things end. Listening to Clementi's declamation makes me want to inflict on him a resection of the vocal cords. The writing that leaves nothing to the imagination is so heavy that it almost makes the unpleasant feeling of being treated as fools by a handful of fake intellectuals fade into the background. Musically, we are at zero on the scale of inventiveness, where the notes are mere background to the unhappy lyrics. In short ... it's really awful.

However, the new masks are cool.

I think it's pretty much bullshit. This time, a pointless and rather sterile wank. Everything is just too gratuitous.