Ænima

Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba

Artist: Tool
Label: ZOO entertainment / Volcano Records / BMG Music
Release: 1996
Runtime: 77:23
Rating: 4.9/5

Anima or enima? No need to choose between the soul substance and the idea of life energy, and the Jungian method of medical treatment that the professional literature calls an enema. The album’s themes once again dive deep into the pools of a mystical perception of the world and the sacred. Alongside landscapes of the mysterious Egyptian mythological universe, elements of Babylon, sacred geometry and a (post)apocalyptic world get woven into the genetic makeup of this modernly conceived world, one that so damn mechanistically, so simply, creeps toward the edge of its collapse and the key revelation of the moment of unconditional abolition, whether we’re talking about 2012 or whatever other year of our (self-)abolition. And reflection on this terminal moment has to be seasoned with a pinch of humor, where the healing figure of comedian and all-round artist Bill Hicks, for whom the band had a special (posthumous) affinity at the time, can be the cure for these perfidious traumas that eat at us, destroy us and push us into the pit of our doom. All this and more is revealed in the record’s design too. On the first pressings, torn-open sequences of motion seen through the lenses on the sleeve lead you onto the first step of cosmic enlightenment with top-notch aesthetics, either on the American edition or with a set of fictitious covers on the European one. The design is one window into a world of mental manipulation; the second layer, even stronger, imprints itself even harder on the canvas of your soul through the auditory channels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32FVi7SpQDk

Aenima is a superb progressive work that weaves the fibers of King Crimson’s subtly sensual textures into a more innovative and inventively original sound all its own. The sonic picture is even firmer and more brutally polished than on the previous releases, with a slightly claustrophobic production from the fingers of David Botrill, the Canadian production wizard who has already played around sonically with Dream Theater, Robert Fripp and Mudvayne. Among his newer discoveries, his fruitful collaboration with the young and truly talented band Fair To Midland is certainly worth a mention. The sound collage builds on itself from moment to moment, and the firm grip of the executors of shamanic dance and musical hypnosis doesn’t let up for a second: the incredibly gifted drummer Danny Carey, guitar wizard Adam Jones, bass priest Justin Chancellor and the supreme druid of vocal enchantment, the nonchalantly headstrong and so sweetly alluring orator Maynard James Keenan. Despite its ties to the fertile legacy of drugs and visions and a past saturated with soft progressive sounds, the record is, even today, after 15 years of the test of time, damn sweet and listenable and, more importantly, still relevant for new generations of listeners. There’s no shortage of hidden bits, brilliant sonic interjections and complex excursions into the unknown, and the refinement of the story gets etched in with restrained aggression and kneads your brain from the very first hook-in to the parabola of the linear unspooling of the narrative threads, and onward. Plenty of this narrative shake-up is there only so that you can grab your own lachrymological toolkit, form your own picture of what you hear, build your own temple of worship and surrender to the moment where the premises of time and space are abolished.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUDgtt-f5h0

The album opens with the catchy, hellishly addictive Stinkfist, which sets the boundary of melodicism and concealed aggression that will wash over you in the solid hour of listening that follows. The story has two sides. One is the physical side of hard petting between two lovers who give each other pleasure with a hand in bodily orifices, or simply through complete merging and melting of two halves into a single chalice. Both are brutally direct and laid bare without embellishment in a string of subtly sung words: “Blend and balance / Pain and comfort / Deep within you / Till you will not have me any other way”. The body undulates, and in the moment of sensual bliss comes a tribute to the dead hero, Bill Hicks. A mantra of rhythmic play and vocal treatment of your brain, dissecting the stage act of a man who crossed the line between the grayness of the crowd and his own false limitations and, by abolishing his physical being, became the central figure of the song Eulogy, one of the album’s brightest moments. Eulogy is a call to nonconformism and to rebellion against the uniformity of the masses. “To ascend you must die. / You must be crucified / For your sins and your lies. / Goodbye…” A more mysterious note comes from a distorted, warped musical experiment, the song H., slow and greasily distorted in its penetration, marked by the very cathartic sound of heavy bass and cognitively dreamy guitar tones, a peak that escalates into an elated chorus. It’s the sensuality of a melancholic slide from extremes of calm into a state of electrified undulation in the flames of cleansing. “And the snake is drowned and / As I look in his eyes, / My fear begins to fade /Recalling all of those times.” Maynard soothes, and after some static crackling comes another escalation of eruptive emotions with Forty-six & Two. “My shadow’s / shedding skin and / I’ve been picking / Scabs again. / I’m down / Digging through / My old muscles /Looking for a clue.” is only the announcement of a great metamorphosis. The old skin gets swept away by a rolling tsunami of spiritual airing-out. The change rises from the dark corners of the subconscious, and an ominous dark matter floods the serene fields of the hypnotically dreamy world of faint existence. Maynard fuses with Jones’s guitars. An outburst of full feeling cuts into granite paving stones with an angry undertone, so that you could take a dreamy stroll through the cold wake-up call of the song Message to Harry Manback, which is just an oral emptying of honest feelings of anger, and after Hooker With A Penis there’s no more time for sweet-talking and wrapping litanies in seemingly soft cellophane. Consumer obscenity is a splendid cue for unspooling an apocalyptic narrative about a well-deserved end of the world, one that’s sensed and announced with fanfares. The fall of a new Babylon is coming soon, and with it a new universal flood, because “All you read and / Wear or see and / Hear on TV / Is a product / Begging for your / Fatass dirty / Dollar”. The next real moment of chakra cleansing, after a somewhat repetitive pause in the otherwise phenomenal performance of Jimmy and the psychedelic, get-high recipe of Die Eier Von Satan, is the hellish swarming of Pushit. “I will choke until I swallow… / Choke this infant here before me. / What is this but my reflection? / Who am I to judge and strike you down?”. A feeling of guilt or weakness? Not at all, because the heavens of clarification, or the mouth of Hell, open with the title track Aenima. “Some say the end is near. / Some say we’ll see armageddon soon. / I certainly hope we will. / I sure could use a vacation from this / Bullshit three ring circus sideshow of / Freaks / Here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LA / The only way to fix it is to flush it all away. / Any fucking time. Any fucking day. / Learn to swim, I’ll see you down in Arizona bay.” Brilliant, and right on time. A film of New Orleans after Katrina starts rolling before your eyes. Time for a global cleansing a bit further north, and frankly a thorough one, with no exceptions for skin color, false religiosity or political devotion to one’s own endless, eternal rightness. Let the dysfunctional world sink in tons of shit, Maynard sings, and you can’t help but get swept up in the fiery sermon and agree with every single word. Tool turn you around and metamorphically transform you from the gray duckling of conformism into the blazing swan of a new, cleansed world. And from the ashes of the old, something new and better can be born, right? It’s precisely about opening new horizons and pure-blooded provocation that the closing speech of Third Eye speaks. A monument to drugs, hallucinations and the illusion called life turns into a feature-length marathon showdown with the last remnants of your unstained consciousness. After contact with the essence of Tool and exposure to high-intellectual radiation, all the chakras open and the soul lights up. After burning out, only an irrevocable end is possible, plus the prospect of a swift return to the tracks of renewed rebirth with the records to come.

Tool are evolution and they are revolution, in sound as much as in deep reflection in mystically ambiguous lyrics. No grasp is easy and no solution is one-dimensional, but what gets triggered is an avalanche of emotions and thoughts that, like the most effective enema, thoroughly flush out all your basic waters and awaken the will to move and to feel. The music, like a tool tailored just for you, helps you slide out of the shells of your worn-out, used-up and useless self into a new astral existence. Aenima is a laxative for the soul and a method of easier adjustment, and Tool are the heralds of a new notion of 21st-century Man. The exceptionality of what you hear, my dear friends, has to be experienced on your own set of ears and brain hemispheres. There are no shortcuts, and that’s exactly as it should be!

Line-up

Justin Chancellor – bass
Danny Carey – drums and percussion
Adam Jones – guitar
Maynard James Keenan – vocals

Guest musicians:
•Marko Fox – vocals on Die Eier von Satan
•Eban Schletter – organ
•Chris Pitman – synthesizer

Production

Tool & David Bottrill

Track list

1. Stinkfist
2. Eulogy
3. H.
4. Useful Idiot
5. Forty Six & 2
6. Message to Harry Manback
7. Hooker with a Penis
8. Intermission
9. Jimmy
10. Die Eier von Satan
11. Pushit
12. Cesaro Summability
13. Ænema
14. (-) Ions
15. Third Eye