Tool - Undertow
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Free Music Notes for Undertow
Free Music Review: Wickedly scary!!!
Hit: 5 Stars
This is TOOL's darkest persona. This has got to be their best cd in their 10+years of the rock industry. I bought this cd along with Cold's 13 Ways to Bleed On Stage, but this, my friend is a hell of a lot better! The opening song "Intolerance" is very confrontive and heavy(I love Maynard's screams)and almost sounds like a total style all of their own. In fact, it IS all of their own sound!!! NO other metal band out there has the exact capability to create such an original piece of hard rock.There is a new metal band out there that's trying to copy TOOL, and that atrocious band is Earshot. DO NOT buy Earshot if you think they're TOOL, because they're NOT. They should die out!!!
Tool should happily go on with their rock stardom and not worry about a thing. The drum work is perfect, the bass EXCELLENT, and
the riffs dark and heavy. The 2 hit singles "Prison Sex" and "Sober" are big highlights. Prison Sex seems to tell about a man
raped in prison and not remembering exactly what happened. Sober
tells about people trying to start their life over again or drink and sleep forever. All of the songs on here are excellent right up to the hidden track 69: Disgustipated. This tells about the omega of the midwest, is the creepiest track on the CD, and unleashes TOOL's malicious darkside. This CD is well worth your time and money, and if you don't own them, I recommend getting TOOL's 3 latter albums, AEnima and Lateralus.
Free Music Review: But this ain't no mammoth dung...
Hit: 5 Stars
Undertow is one of those albums you should listen to now and again...especially if you have gotten hung up on Lateralus or Aenima, etc. Of course, if you don't own a copy yet, well, then get one. In a sense it's easy to forget how good it is, I actually get a little homesick for it on occasion and dust it off and have another inspection. The music is just so clean, so uncomplicated as other Tool albums. "Crawl Away" is a perfect example of this. Probably the top draw would be "Sober" and not for poor reasoning...it bleeds from the same vein as the band's other revocations of religious dogma. "Prison Sex" is likely my favorite of the bunch. Not only is it a great rocker (like the title track - "Undertow") but it could speak as well for the innocent as the next serial killer. Like Jim Morrison might have had a say in this, "...we could plant a murder...or start a religion."
Again let me state, it is easy to forget how clean and unsullied the sound is...crisp and driving, yeah, that's the word - driving. Gotta give it 5 stars. Looking forward to May when the new release is expected!
Oh, also keep in mind our ancestoral history. At some point in antiquity along our evolutionary path, there had to be a first...the very first artist who lay in his cro-magnan cave and decided for whatever aesthetic impulse to fling wooly mammoth crap at his cave wall. Along came a visitor who beheld this creation. Along came the critic.
Free Music Review: Excellent follow-up album
Hit: 5 Stars
Tool's debut album was good, but this follow-up is great. What genre of music does Tool fall into? Nu-metal? Metal? Does it matter? Nope.
It's thick, heavy, primitive rhythms and drums. It's African beats on meth meets modern music technology in the form of distorted guitars, with angry yet controlled vocals.
Where speed metal and hardcore metal often goes wrong, Tool goes right - which evidently puts them into the nu-metal category. Guitar and drum parts that are played too fast make a song sound tinny and weak, which is what most speed metal suffers from. Tool finds a balance between speed and tone which makes the music sound so much heavier and potent. Secondly, the vocals are not cookie-monster type growls or noises; they're clearly a human voice enraged and full of venom. Death metal and the like often sound silly because singing over a really sweet riff is a guy howling like a barnyard animal. It's just ridiculous because it makes a parody of itself by pushing stupidity to the max. Tool once again stays on track here with human vocals that sound good, are audible, and deliver sometimes disturbing themes.
This album is thicker than their debut album but it's more sparse than the albums that came later. One could make the case for one of the albums to come to be their best, but it's a matter of taste. Quite frankly, this album is A+ material from start to finish.
Free Music Review: One Step Closer to the Awakening.
Hit: 5 Stars
While many albums seem to go down rather than up as the band releases new albums, this one is yet another step by an amazing, unparalleled band. While Undertow bore somewhat in its lyrics an undertone (tow) of some sort of anger, and directly confroted several issues of humanity and pychology, Aenima flat-out luanches an attack on society that will leave one shivering in its tracks. Undertow was focused so forward on single subjects in its songs, but Aenima is a collection of aggravation. And what makes the album the most amazing in TOOL's line yet is that it is almost an awakening; an arcehtypal rising from the waters of confusion. Perhaps the most emotional and powerful song that has EVER been written "Third Eye" has an effect more profound than the spine-tingling ending in Undertow. From the start of the song, the listener is drawn in by the mysterious heartbeats, and the opening voice, and as it goes along, Maynard's amazing voice takes the listener on a twisting rollercoaster of the mind. . . and those who would listen to "Third Eye" will feel themselves anew when the final guitar note fades to a silent ending, and Maynard's mind-shattering screams die out like the cold lights of something turning its back into a deep hole. Only poetic words can describe this album. those who want tlook inside the mind MUST buy this album. They will not regret it.Free Music Review: What the...
Hit: 5 Stars
I've just left my "nu-metal" phrase, cos i've only been listening to metal for 2 years. Now, i have 2 people screaming into my ears, "Listen to more hardcore bands" and "Listen to more progressive, experimental bands". I needed a medium. Then, I heard Aenima by Tool (single). I was shocked that i liked it so much, since I'd only heard Schism before now and i didn't take to kind likely to it (Don't hit me, I was in my "nu-metal" stage). I started thinking "Tool are hard enough and are progressive in the own right" Perfect.Soon, i was standing in HMV, looking at the metal section i came across Undertow by Tool. "hmmm" i thought. "I haven't heard anything off this ablum, but the other stuff i've heard is pretty good, it's a bit of a gamble buying this". My £15 was burning a hole in my pocket, I needed some new stuff to listen to, so i did it... I returned home and immediatly put the CD in my player and pressed play.
This album is great. I listened and listened hard and i loved it. My favourite track is probably Undertow itself, probably for the pre chorus where Keenan sings quietly " I'm so comfortable, too comfortable". I just do not know what to say. Go buy it. Don't take my word for it, or anyone elses. Tool are a band that you and you alone should listen to and make you're own opinion.