If it wasn't for bands like Tool, the music world would be a very boring place. The one little thing about the particular progressive metal band in question is that they exercise a certain amount of originality, which is a quality not often seen in the music scene of today, a scene populated by countless copycat boy and girl bands that are popping up faster than a 55 year old Viagra user. I personally consider Tool to be one of the most fascinating bands...ever. Their second full-length album, Ænima, proves this - it's INCREDIBLY diverse in terms of content. Out of the 15 tracks, only 9 of them are common place songs. The rest are interesting uses of, for lack of a better word, noise. Die Eier Von Satan, for instance, is one of the most evil sounding pieces of work I have ever heard...not only is it done in an unusual kind of industrial hardcore, but it's in German. If you were just to listen to this one track with no prior knowledge of the German language, you'd probably think it's about somethin' serious, huh? I mean, there's this guy, right, simply reading off spoken words in German to a raving crowd. But get this - it's really just a cookie recipe (albeit a very STRANGE cookie recipe.. you don't find many items in cook books that include hashish as an ingredient).

See, this is the other thing I like about Tool - they have this off-beat sense of humour that shows through in some things, like the track Message to Harry Manback. It starts with some soothing piano music, then you hear this tape recording of an Italian...seems innocent enough, almost like a poetry recital, until you turn up the volume and finally get a listen of what he's saying. Be warned, it contains some...profanity, in two different tongues.

Every single Tool song I've heard could have more than one interpretation - they all contain these metaphysical references and general confusion (don't forget the sometimes hard to determine lyrics) that just make things easy to form your own idea of what the song is about, but be completely off by a longshot. I believe that the only people that actually have a true insight into the meanings behind the songs are the band themselves, and even then, I'm not so sure...

This album took awhile to grow on me, but in the meantime, I just sat around playing with the CD case (Hee hee! Holograms!) ... ... ... but after about my third time through Ænima, I finally realized how fantastic it is. This album is practically perfect, and more than deserves the score I gave it. Even today, it is still one of my most-listened-to CDs, and it's more than likely that when you read this, Ænima will be going for a spin in my CD player.

ARTIST: Tool

ALBUM TITLE: Ænima

NUMBER OF TRACKS: 15

LENGTH OF ALBUM: 77 minutes, 18 seconds

FAVOURITE TRACKS: Forty Six & 2, Third Eye, Ænema

QUALITY: 5/5