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Keenan’s intense vocal stylings convey urgency at all times, be it a whisper, more brassy full-throated fare, or all-out screaming. The music is heavy overall with sparse, nuanced moments throughout. This is particularly evident in “Message to Harry Manback” (a recording of a violent, expletive-laden voicemail atop soft piano), “Intermission” (a kitschy jazz organ arrangement of “Jimmy”), and “Die Eier von Satan” (aka “The Eggs (Balls) of Satan,” a recipe for hash sugar cookies aggressively recited in German over a screaming, responsorial crowd, reminiscent of Nazi rallies). Timothy Leary.) Also, the album’s title track is a take on a regular Hicks trope: an earthquake causing LA (and the countless superfluous cultural ills it houses) to plunge into the ocean, leaving only “Arizona Bay.” Hence the refrain, “Learn to swim.” (Live renditions, though rare, substitute Hicks for a recording of Dr. To drive the point home further, beyond Hicksian attitude, the album’s crown jewel and final track “Third Eye” opens with several Hicks clips above a growing psychedelic maelstrom of sound before giving way to the song proper. Hicks, a friend of Keenan’s and one of the more biting and cynical satirists of the last few decades, died in 1994, and is described as “ another dead hero” in the liner notes. Such a description of the lyrical content could also be applied to the ouvre of comedian Bill Hicks, to whom the album is dedicated. The lyrics are wide-ranging - alternately existential, darkly comical, angst-ridden, and mystical. Ænima is multi-faceted, to say the least. It’s musically interesting on a technical level the music and message are equal parts profound and humorous and everything comes together to simply rock and groove hard. In this respect, Ænima was one of the first album to move me on all three levels. I read an interview with saxophonist Jeff Coffin once in which he said that the most moving music affects you in multiple ways simultaneously: your head, heart, and body. (Tool is still in my Top 5, of course, but at that time the band was without peer.) It spoke to me in various ways. It served as my entryway into a new musical world.īecause of this album and the near fanatical devotion it inspired in me, Tool was my favorite band throughout high school and much of college.
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The album itself is great, and one that I’m just as excited to listen to twenty years later.Ģ. Like Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and Crash, Ænima is a twofold touchstone for me:ġ. With it, vocalist Maynard James Keenan, guitarist Adam Jones, drummer Danny Carey, and then-new bassist Justin Chancellor cemented Tool as one of the most formidable bands in rock. It wasn’t the first hard rock/metal album I owned, but it was the one that struck deepest.
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Ænima completes my personal holy trinity of top albums that were released in ~1996. It was released on vinyl on Septemand on CD on October 1, 1996.