May 2020 Feature Release - The Gateway Edition

It's now May which of course means that we'll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we're asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. Ben & I will certainly be contributing & we look forward to hearing your thoughts too.        

This month's feature release for The Gateway is 2001's magnificent "Lateralus" album from Los Angeles' finest exponents of alternative metal Tool. Dual members of The Infinite should rejoice because this opus represents one of the finest expressions in not only the alternative metal genre but also your most ambitious progressive metal one. In fact, it was strong enough to warrant me seeing them twice on the accompanying tour where they absolutely blew me away. Treasure this experience guys because this is the cream of the crop.

https://metal.academy/releases/78

I have made a lot of statements since becoming a music critic that have earned me a lot of flack. But not statement I have ever made has been more controversial than me believing Ænima is the bands worst album. I'll spare the details, but in short, the interludes that break up the track listing have a high brow sense of humor that made the album, as well as the band, sound like pretentious assholes.

That feeling is gone on Lateralus. Every track is fluent and flows into the next with effortlessness. The groups songwriting and performances are the best of their entire career. And while this album still does wreak of pretentiousness, I can't fault it because the storytelling is among the best I've ever heard across a single album.  Daniel says that this is "cream of the crop" and he isn't wrong. There is no reason for songs like "Schism" to have crossed over onto rock radio stations in 2001/2. But it did, probably out of sheer will of the people. And I couldn't be any happier that it did.

10/10

As a pretty massive Tool fan for a good part of my life (not in the pretentious asshole way), I'll one-up you on these controversial Tool opinions: I never thought Lateralus was that good. Whenever I hear people explain why Lateralus is the greatest Tool album, I feel like I take all their strong feelings and just convert them over to 10,000 Days, which is far and above my favorite Tool album. I've probably listened to Lateralus, Ænima, and 10,000 Days hundreds of times combined over the years, and while I don't listen to them much anymore, my opinions haven't really changed yet. 

Lateralus, to me, just has too much filler and portions that I don't really care to listen to. I agree that certain tracks are some of the best they've ever made, which include "The Grudge", "Schism", and "Lateralus", but I never got that "Full Body Experience" that everyone else seems to get from this album. Instead, I got it from 10,000 Days. I never felt the album was connected as people made it out to be, since I constantly wanted to skip "Eon Blue Apocalypse", "Mantra", "Parabol", among others. There's just so much downtime that doesn't feel like it gets a proper payoff in Lateralus, even though the album is still incredible. I would have to revisit it along with 10,000 Days and really listen to it intently to see if I can get a bit of what everyone else has been getting after all these years, but for now I'm going to stick to my guns and keep my 4/5 rating. 

There are some interesting opinions here which is what makes these monthly feature releases such fun. Personally, I think "Lateralus" is an amazing record & Tool's best work but it's not perfect. Unlike "Aenima", I don't think there are any weak inclusions however tracks like "Mantra" & "Faaip de Oiad" definitely aren't as engaging as the better material. "Aenima" isn't far behind as far as overall quality however I do  find tracks like "Intermission" & "Die Eier von Satan" to be pretty hard going. Minor faults aside though, they're both classic releases as far as I'm concerned & I've never placed their other albums (with the exception of the horribly underrated live release "Salival") into that category. 4.5/5 each from me.