see, like...

as soon as you start talking about tool as a metal band, you lose me, which was why it took so long for me to get into them in the first place. yes, i remember sober, the animated video, the late night play, the whole thing. i thought it was dumb. i thought their fans were dumb...

my opinion of them did not change through the initial release of aenima.

a few years later, i guess in '97 or '98, i got ganged up on by some people on the skinny puppy list about it. it was the two marks - meddle and robinson. they insisted that i stop referring to tool as a dumb metal band, because they were better than that. in fact, given my general tastes, i ought to like them. they insisted that while the band did take some musical cues from metal, they took more ideas from progressive rock (which they knew i liked) and they took more lyrical ideas from punk rock (which they knew i liked). it was more like rollins fronting king crimson than some dumbass satanic metal band. so, i needed to shut up. i needed to get over my aversion to metal, and listen to it more carefully.

and, i relented - i picked up aenima at the second hand store, and it took me a few tries, but i was able to get into it, eventually. and, they were right - this wasn't actually a metal band at all. this was a band that talked hardcore and sounded prog.

over time, they've kind of collapsed into themselves. somebody else may claim that they grew up. they might argue that the band has grown. but, i just think they got boring. lateralus is not terrible, but it's 50% filler; 10,000 days is mostly terrible. i didn't find their newfound spirituality to be very compelling; they were never able to get me again in the way they got me in the more misanthropic tracks at the start of their career.

so, the media is claiming that they're these metal icons, or something. ask an actual metalhead - they'll disagree with you, but they'll probably claim they're a pop band before they claim they're a punk band. then, ask some old punks. ask some grunge fans. tell me what they think...

i've actually started listening to it, and is it playing at the right tempo?