The new Tool album is a joke.

[lateralus]

And excuse the fact that I've only read the first couple of posts if I missed anything.

Like, for example, the entire conversation.

if you know the Tool FAQ well enough, you might notice all the contradictions in this "10,000 Days". (LOL)

I haven't yet read the Tool FAQ (I'll put it on my todo list), but I managed to see said contradictions anyway.

First of all, how much of the album is spoken from a fervently Christian point of view? A lot of us remember the April Fool's joke in 2005, with the Kurt Loder MTV fiasco (haha) in which Maynard announced that he'd 'found Jesus'. Much to Kurt Loder's -and any other reporter dumb enough to accept it as fact- chagrin, it turned out to be a big laugh. Secondly, any APC fan will, if he'd been paying attention, refer you to:

Youâ??re such an inspiration for the ways
That Iâ??ll never ever choose to be
Oh so many ways for me to show you
How the savior has abandoned you
Fuck your god
Your lord and your christ
He did this
Took all you had and
Left you this way
Still you pray, you never stray
Never taste of the fruit
You never thought to question why

Itâ??s not like you killed someone
Itâ??s not like you drove a hateful spear into his side
Praise the one who left you
Broken down and paralyzed

He did it all for you
He did it all for you


Oh so many many ways for me to show you
How your dogma has abandoned you
Pray to your christ, to your god
Never taste of the fruit
Never stray, never break
Never---choke on a lie
Even though heâ??s the one who did this to you
You never thought to question why

Not like you killed someone
Itâ??s not like you drove a spiteful spear into his side
Talk to jesus christ
As if he knows the reasons why
He did it all for you
Did it all for you
He did it all for you..

which entirely contradicts the whole point of tracks three and four of the new album.

Why does it need to grow on you before you start to like it... what a shitty way to "appreciate" music... and yet almost everyone does it.

Well, I'd been hearing Tool on the radio for years, all the while blatantly loathing their sound. It wasn't until I decided to really give them a try a couple years ago that I got into the band and started to truly appreciate the intracacies of their lyrics and sound, so I definitely have to disagree with you here. In fact, I think you even contradicted yourself in that paragraph:

no wonder no one can hear that Tool's new album sucks. I doubt most of you even really listen to the music and how it's put together... all you hear is a song with a title...

right here. If you're expected to like it after only a single listen, how can you possibly hear all of the subtleties in music of this kind (which is part of the reason I became interested)? Sure, someone with an incredibly analytic ear might be able to sort of pull this off, but not your average Joe. (i.e., most of us)

Get over Tool so that maybe they'll stop fucking around and put out a good album. Not a decent one...

I only wish the band could admit it themselves and end this whole thing but why would they want to do that when they can put out any product they shit out of they're rusty assholes and make money off a bunch of idiots.

I doubt Tool will come out and admit any such thing, and it's quite a shame they don't do more interviews. I even read somewhere that the band avoids, as much as possible, reading fan reviews of their music so as not to influence their ego or music. Come to think of it, what about their Meshuggah influence? So much for not influencing their music. I heard a few parts that may have been influenced by Meshuggah (Catch 33), but they could've just as easily been 100% Tool. Wherever the supposed influence lies, in my opinion, it's subtle.

And all those gay solos?? I mean, what the hell has Adam thinking? Awesome effects... could have been used welll but nope... WAHHH WAAOOHHH WHEEEE WAHHHH WIDDILY WAAAOHHHAHHH...

I agree. Those kinds of solos are far from innovative and have been done a million times, but I wonder if they've ever been as drawn out and boring as in these instances. Have you ever listened to The Doors - The End? A substantial piece of one of the tracks (if memory serves, track four) is spookily reminiscent of pieces of that song going as far as to even completely recycle the drum beat.

Why must people delve so DEEP into music and the bands info. Know all the shit about them, who thier mom is, what they did in 4th grade. Just fucking listen to the music you like. Simple

To truly attempt to obtain even an inkling of understanding of what Tool intended to convey, you can't just 'fucking listen to the music'. For example, Maynard strongly hints of Jungian psychological theory, and, I mean, I don't know about you, but Jungian theory isn't exactly my typical, mundane dinner-table conversation topic. Read the beginning of my post for another example.

And there are a few parts in Rosetta Stoned that I thought were ok... "HOLY FUCKING SHIT!1" ect...

I think the song sounds great after "You had better, you'd better listen". Really great, actually. Still, I've written songs of greater complexity in a half an hour.

Sunkist and Sudafed, goddamn, shit the bed? Oh so you're fucking Meth fiend now? What is the point? And what does Rosetta Stoned mean? Is that a character in this story?

I don't know who the hell Rosetta is, but you do realize Rosetta Stoned is a continuation of the previous song, right? It isn't the only instance of such two-part pieces in the CD, and to tell you the truth, I enjoy the transitions between the the intro/conclusions (3&4 is the other one).. At first, I thought 'Rosetta' was the narrator, but.. in the previous track, the doctor repeatedly refers to the patient as a male, and I assume Rosetta is a feminine name, but who knows.. Whoever is narrating, though, somehow wanders or is taken into a hospital, and tells his/her story of being the unlikely candidate for an alien encounter in which he is surprised to hear that the "E motherfucking T" chooses him to deliver some kind of very deep message indeed, to whoever will listen. What was the message? Oops, he forgot.

It seems, at times, that the album is building this incredible crescendo in order to climax with this awe-inspiring, emotional, epic, intellectual brilliance that we all expected, but most of the crescendos seem to lead to either an overly extended plateau of boringness or a sore disappointment in the form of a very lame -but heavy- guitar riff. I always think of Wings for Marie and 10,000 Days when I think of this.. the former had some very nice, I thought, moments (actually, the moments I'm talking about are duplicated in the song after it, toward the end), and I loved the intro to 10,000 Days. I love that bassline, and that thunder is effective.. there's so much potential in that song.. you get the feeling you're about to witness something phenomenal, 'cause after all, it's Tool damn it - and the song doesn't go anywhere. After all the bashing, though, I still appreciate and enjoy the album despite its lulls and repetitive disappointments.

I know I forgot to include something. I *always* do.