Ænima
- Scores: Noise 2, Unease 3, Complexity 4 (each 1 to 5)
- Genre: Metal, Progressive Metal, Alternative Metal
- Mood: dark, tense, surreal
- Sound: odd time signatures, polyrhythmic drumming, long songs, interludes and sketches, dynamic builds, dark humor
Ænima is a long, heavy album, running 77 minutes, in which six short interludes connect the full-length songs. Tool recorded it with producer David Bottrill in California with bassist Justin Chancellor, who had joined the year before. The interludes are sound collage in their own right: “Useful Idiot” ends with a needle skipping on a record, which on vinyl becomes a locked groove, and “Die Eier von Satan” is a German recitation of a cookie recipe, delivered with the menace of a rally, over a reversed 9/8 drum beat and a single chord in Drop C. “Message to Harry Manback” sets calm piano and seagull sounds against a profane answering-machine message, and “Third Eye” closes the album with samples of Bill Hicks over 13 minutes. Bill Hicks also partly inspired the album’s approach, and the German track has been compared to Einstürzende Neubauten and Tom Waits.
Track list
- Stinkfist (5:11)
- Eulogy (8:28)
- H. (6:07)
- Useful Idiot (0:38)
- Forty Six & 2 (6:04)
- Message to Harry Manback (1:53)
- Hooker with a Penis (4:33)
- Intermission (0:56)
- Jimmy (5:24)
- Die Eier von Satan (2:17)
- Pushit (9:55)
- Cesaro Summability (1:26)
- Ænema (6:39)
- (-) Ions (4:00)
- Third Eye (13:47)