Lateralus Full Album
Blanche Bunnell
Lateralus (/ˌltəˈrləs/)[2] is the third studio album by the American rock band Tool. It was released on May 15, 2001, through Volcano Entertainment. The album was recorded at Cello Studios in Hollywood and The Hook, Big Empty Space, and The Lodge, in North Hollywood, between October 2000 and January 2001. David Bottrill, who had produced the band's two previous releases nima and Salival, produced the album along with the band, and became the last Tool album produced by Bottrill to date. On August 23, 2005, Lateralus was released as a limited edition two-picture-disc vinyl LP in a holographic gatefold package.
The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, selling more than 555,200 copies in its first week of release.[3] It was certified triple platinum by the RIAA on April 15, 2021.[4] On February 13, 2015, the album was certified Gold by the BPI.[5] It was also certified double platinum in both Australia and Canada.[6][7] The band won the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance for the song "Schism" in 2002.[8] Lateralus was ranked No. 123 on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "Definitive 200" list.[9]
Lateralus emerged after a four-year legal dispute with Tool's label, Volcano Entertainment.[10] In January 2001, the band announced that their new album's title would be Systema Encphale and provided a 12-song track list with titles such as "Riverchrist", "Numbereft", "Encephatalis", "Musick", and "Coeliacus". File sharing networks such as Napster were flooded with bogus files bearing the titles' names.[11] At the time, Tool's members were outspokenly critical of file-sharing networks in general due to the negative impact on artists that are dependent on success in record sales to continue their career. During an interview with NY Rock in 2000, lead singer Maynard James Keenan stated:
I think there are a lot of other industries out there that might deserve being destroyed. The ones who get hurt by MP3s are not so much companies or the business, but the artists, people who are trying to write songs.[12]
A month later, the band revealed that the new album was actually titled Lateralus (supposedly a portmanteau of the leg muscle Vastus lateralis and the term lateral thinking)[13] and that the name Systema Encphale and the track list had been a ruse.[14]
Just as Salival was initially released with several errors on the track listing, early pressings of Lateralus had the ninth track incorrectly spelled as "Lateralis".[10] The original title of "Reflection" was "Resolution" before being changed three months prior to the album's release.[11]
The track listing is altered on the vinyl edition, with "Disposition" appearing at track 8. Because of the long running time, the double vinyl edition could not be released like the disc since the songs would not fit on each disc side in that order. By moving "Disposition" to an earlier point, the sides were balanced and could fit the material. This edit breaks the segue that occurs between "Disposition" and "Reflection", however, which, along with "Triad", are linked together on the tracklist.[25]
The insert is translucent and flips open to reveal the different layers of the human body. Disguised in the brain matter on the final layer is the word "God". The artwork was done by artist Alex Grey, who would later design the 3D edition cover for the followup to Lateralus, 10,000 Days.
Drummer Danny Carey sampled himself breathing through a tube to simulate the chanting of Buddhist monks for "Parabol", and banged piano strings for samples on "Reflection".[26] "Faaip de Oiad" samples a recording of a 1997 call on Art Bell's radio program Coast to Coast AM.[27] "Faaip de Oiad" is Enochian for The Voice of God.
"Disposition", "Reflection", and "Triad" form a sequence[1] that has been performed in succession live with occasional help from various tourmates such as Mike Patton, Dave Lombardo, Buzz Osborne, Tricky, and members of Isis, Meshuggah, and King Crimson.[28]
The title track, "Lateralus", incorporates the Fibonacci sequence.[29] The theme of the song describes the desire of humans to explore and to expand for more knowledge and a deeper understanding of everything. The lyrics "spiral out" refer to this desire and also to the Fibonacci spiral, which is formed by creating and arranging squares for each number in the sequence's 1,1,2,3,5,8,... pattern, and drawing a curve that connects to two corners of each square. This would, allowed to continue onwards, theoretically create a never-ending and infinitely expanding spiral. Related to this, the song's main theme features successive time signatures 9/8, 8/8, and 7/8.[30] The number 987 is the sixteenth integer of the Fibonacci sequence.[31]
Overall, Lateralus was met with generally favorable reviews by mainstream music critics upon its initial release. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, the album received an average score of 75, which indicates "generally favorable reviews", based on 15 reviews.[33] Many of their responses mentioned the album's ambition and ability to confound listeners, such as Spin's Ryan Rayhil's summarization of it as a "monolithic puzzlebox".[42] Rob Theakston reviewed the record for AllMusic, where he claimed that "Lateralus demands close listening from the first piece onward, as it becomes quickly apparent that this is not going to be an album one can listen to and accept at face value. Complex rhythm changes, haunting vocals, and an onslaught of changes in dynamics make this an album other so-called metal groups could learn from."[18]
By contrast, in a review for Pitchfork, Brent DiCrescenzo claimed that, "With the early new century demanding 'opuses', Tool follows suit. The problem is, Tool defines 'opus' as taking their 'defining element' (wanking sludge) and stretching it out to the maximum digital capacity of a compact disc."[38] In the Village Voice, Robert Christgau lambasted the album, calling it "meaning-mongering for the fantasy fiction set."[41] The review published in Blender described the album as sounding like "Black Sabbath jamming with Genesis at the bottom of a coal shaft."[45][46]
The album was a commercial success in the United States, debuting at No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 albums chart with over 555,200 copies sold in its first week of release.[3] On August 5, 2003, the album was certified double platinum by the RIAA. On April 30, 2010, the album was certified gold by the BPI for sales of 100,000 in the U.K.[5] In addition, Lateralus was certified double platinum by the ARIA and MC.[6][7]
Tool received the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance for the song "Schism".[8] During the band's acceptance speech, drummer Danny Carey stated that he would like to thank his parents "for putting up with [him]", and bassist Justin Chancellor concluded, "I want to thank my dad for doing my mom."[47]
A vinyl edition and two DVD singles from the album were released later. The "double vinyl four-picture disc" edition of Lateralus was first released as a limited autographed edition exclusively available to fan club members and publicly released on August 23, 2005. Two music videos were produced; one for "Schism" (with the short ambient segue "Mantra" at the beginning) and one for "Parabol/Parabola". These were subsequently released as two separate DVD singles on December 20, 2005, featuring remixes of the tracks by Lustmord.
As a person matures they must choose between continuing to wear their grudges, or shed this immaturity and be humbled by their wrongdoings. This idea is referencing the Saturn Return. This is the term used to describe the process of Saturn returning to its astrological place once every thirty or so years, which also marks an age in the human lifespan where many people reach a higher level of maturity.
Gripping hold of grudges is damaging to the person and the people around them, and is a negative force in life. Growing more mature lets people choose to leave this behind. Some people will be able to do this easily, but others will find it a difficult time in their life. This is an idea based on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, which is made up of ten stages that take a person from unenlightened to fully enlightened. The first stage of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life is Crown, and the tenth stage is kingdom.
TOOL were told by their record label that they needed to add a heavier song to Lateralus in order to sell to a wider audience, since heavy music was popular at the time. The band were angered by this, believing that their album should be considered as art as opposed to merely a product to sell. This song is the one they were asked to add, and they wrote it about the very people who told them to.
Another idea from Jungian Alchemy is that the body and the mind are meant to operate in unison, and that when one uses more mental energy than they need to, communication between body and mind is weakened. This song states that over-thinking separates the two, and that this leads to missed opportunities in life. Instead of analysing everything, we should live in the moment and accept whatever comes at us. We need to embrace the random. This leads to infinite possibilities.
If we live life in this way we will feel more connected to the world around us, and to other people. We will be more in tune with our emotions, and more able to notice the power and the beauty of life. It means we can be aware of our divinity, in that our souls will live on after our bodies die, yet by living in the moment, still be human.
Letting go of control can be an overwhelming experience. Opening wide to the world and allowing it all in, good and evil is bewildering. It can lead you to places nowhere has ever been. Spiral out. Keep going.
God knows why they did that, this tracklisting makes so much more sense. I always thought Lateralus was a brilliant album, but it fell off a cliff after the title track, with this running order the whole album feels different and the intermission-like tracks fit really well into the flow of the record.
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