Tool
Lateralus

THE REVIEW

I begin by apologizing for what will be considered a troooooop long review, but I find it essential to try to explore the complicated and sublime world of Tool with coherence and professionalism, so as not to fall into the mistake of reducing one of the greatest masterpieces of all time music to a banal and partial description of the dark sounds of an excellent Californian metal band. Therefore, I will decide to tackle the "aenima and ccore" issue, and I hope that you will at least appreciate the attempt to engage in a search for conceptual depth that is as arduous as ever.

Leonardo Fibonacci

Leonardo Fibonacci, otherwise known as Leonardo of Pisa, was a famous mathematician spanning the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, known in his field for intriguing and arduous mathematical puzzles, solvable with the numerical series he discovered, the "Fibonacci spiral," which became a classic algebraic sequence as early as the fourteenth century. This spiral, discovered in 1202, was based on a numerical succession defined by the formula: K(n) = K(n-1) + K(n-2), in which each term of the series, sum of the two numbers that precede it, is called a "Fibonacci number": 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ...987. The ratio between each Fibonacci number and its successor always approaches a number, 0.618, known as the golden ratio, a highly used ratio in the composition of pictorial or architectural elements. This number aroused profound interest among many artists of the time (including Leonardo da Vinci), for whom it was known as "divine proportion." The Fibonacci spiral was considered for many centuries the foundation of a universal harmony, a sort of natural sense of things: it indeed recurs in various elements in nature, such as flower petals, shells, the growth of a leaf on a tree, the biological growth of some species, and even in stock market trends; the dimensions of da Vinci's Mona Lisa are in the golden ratio, as are the proportions of the United Nations Headquarters in New York. A mathematical expression of the beauty and elegance of nature.

The Cover

On the cover of Lateralus, curated by Alex Gray, a Fibonacci spiral is drawn, piercing from above through the brain and chest of a skinless man figure, sectioned into translucent sheets, after which what remains is the mystical energy of a background of eyes and reflections, with the spiral dominating at the center. Seen from the back in backlight, the album appears like a sort of sacred image of some saint, immersed in a halo of rays.

Lateralus
"I embrace my desire to...
I embrace my desire to...
(Feel the rhythm of
Feeling connected
Enough to get out of the way and
Cry like a widow to
Feel inspired, to
Understand well the power to
Witness the beauty to
Bathe in the fountain to
Swing in the spiral to
Swing in the spiral to
Swing in the spiral of
Our divinity and still be human"

This is what for me is the perfect epicenter of the album. It's about the tracklist, it's about the vortex towards which every note, every scream, every word of the album ideally tends. It's the gravitational point around which the immense rage and sublime despair unleashed by that caged tiger, Maynard James Keenan, revolve.

Rage

The album starts with "The Grudge", the innate cosmic rage twisting in an eight-minute harrowing ride, with the ultimate peak in the cathartic and now-famous twenty-seven-second scream of the tiger, whose voice is more complex and immense than ever. The grudge is sublimated into an awareness of one's despair, a rage to alienate and nurture as a separate body (wear the grudge like a crown of negativity), to let it explode and go, go to a new place. Because Lateralus opens up a new dimension to infinite rage, where the pieces fit together and where eternity grants the awareness that all this suffering is an illusion. It's a new stance different from the rest of Tool's production, as from the rest of the musical output of all the rock and metal bands in the world. Madness materializes in a kind of parallel universe, which only the spiral of universal harmony, the harmony of heaven and earth, of water and fire can lead to. And one can only reach the spiral through the crucifixion of one's ego and through the abyss of one's earthly experience. And it is indeed right after "Ticks And Leeches", the most violent and exhausting track of the entire album, that we reach "Lateralus": every word of the verses is syllabicated to perfectly mark the numbers of the Fibonacci sequence, through a journey of alienation and supreme detachment from one's shell that leads the human soul to sway in the infinite reality of perfection (may just go where no one's been / spiral out, keep going). See to believe: black (1) then (1) white are (2) all I see (3) in my infancy (5) red and yellow then came to be (8)...

Reflections

The parallel universe manifests between reflections of moonlight, the light of death, a background of reflections reminiscent of the divine-featured man inside the cover. Even musically, "Reflection" climbs impetuously with references to other tracks (note for example that part of the final solo reprises a less distorted riff of "Disposition," the previous track to which it is linked by an orgasmic tribal, dark and mysterious drum), developing on a base built from the noise caused by first the bass and then the guitar approaching the amplifier. A mystical, almost transcendental noise, that sends the sound from the left eardrum to the right one, a sort of mirror effect on which the tiger's voice stands out, this time praying, almost in tears: And you will come to find

That we are all one mind
Capable of all that
Is imagined
And all that is imaginable is conceivable
Just let the light touch you
And let the words flow through
And let them pass right through
Releasing our hope and our reason...

It is the world of perfection, where the artistic representation of harmony is born on the brink of the abyss, and it could not be otherwise. It's the world where the accounts balance, because life and thoughts are supported by the mathematical perfection unattainable in this cold and cynical dimension, and by an eternity assured by escape from one's corporeal dimension, and by arrival in the absolute where everything is found and nothing can ever be lost again.

It's calling me.