Opiate

 What did the American market have to offer in the early nineties, besides grunge and metal soaked in nu-metal rhythms and Pantera-style vocals? Not that I didn’t enjoy any of it, but thank the gods of the highest pantheon that in 1992 Los Angeles got its first dose of apocalyptic music, rooted in progressive rock experimentation, daring to storm the stages raw and rough around the edges. The phenomenon went by the name Tool. Honestly, their greatest achievement is simply that they were the first to squeeze the darkness leaning toward underground metal into an art rock framework, shot through with the sound of post-thrash metal, in a way that hardly anyone finds off-putting. Metallica wrote multi-part, multi-layered songs like they were composers, while trying their damnedest to stay accessible to the masses. Tool didn’t. They fell into the flowing rhythms of the artistic, bohemian-minded striving of Jane’s Addiction, while keeping a link to the dark, merciless, stripped-bare vision of grindcore, death metal and thrash (take the direct assault of ‘Part Of Me’, which no old-school thrash metal band would be ashamed of). Even in their post-punk influences, they wanted to play their music with the punchy aesthetic of a progressive rock anti-song, switching lightning-fast between long, intricately crafted instrumental intros and the blatant, pseudo-meaningful, made-up meanings of their lyrics. Opiate is the first nail with which they settle scores with society as a place of eternal criticism and rotten brood.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF_WKwbueG8

The rawness of the production comes mainly from the fact that this time, to test the climate on the scene, they served up an EP. A little record that wins you over with six hard-hitting songs. On two of them you can actually hear that live they have no intention of going shallow or charming the crowd with lukewarm, meaningless phrases about eternal affection and begging for acceptance. That acceptance, if you have even a little common sense and at least a tiny pinch of cynicism, irony and a bit of a self-critical urge to evaluate the state of the world, is completely a given. Maynard’s distinctive vocals never again sounded so direct and organic, honestly as if he were singing to you in the basement of your apartment block or house, as you can hear right from the first song, ‘Sweat’. Then there’s the playful bounce of the almost funk-tinged ‘Hush’, where they rise up against the petty-bourgeois cliché-mongering of the system’s molded drones. The middle finger is raised so high it’s impossible to miss. Every bit of censorship only gets them going. The real treat is precisely the two live recordings, which set this record apart as something special. Tool still don’t have an official live album, even though live is exactly where they’re at their most convincing, making us see that we can only lose out forever if we ignore them. ‘Cold And Ugly’ slides from aggressive burning into soft textures, the ones that make the Tool sound so erotically attractive and inviting, via ‘Jerk-Off’ all the way to the grand finale with the closing song ‘Opiate’, which drew its content from Marx’s critique of organized religion as the opium of the masses, blinding and crippling the free human will and the desire to rebel, when that rebellion is – justified and absolutely necessary. Oh, and one more thing: after the last song there’s a hidden, very Doors-tinged track that could only have been inspired by some wonderful chemical or experimental drug. Tool become messiahs, heralds of the gospel of human liberation and refined satirists of those who can’t see their own delusions. The tool for building your own personal philosophy of self-salvation has been offered. The challenge has been thrown down. But don’t you dare expect crutches that serve up your effort toward salvation as an instant drink. The Tool guys, on principle alone, wouldn’t even offer you that.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwIAMfF0jvw

A wonderful record that, because of its short running time, we can’t call a full-length album. But it’s very appealing and, I repeat, we never again got such a direct ‘crash course’ through the spheres of the Tool universe. A must-have bite for every Tool fan, or for people who can’t get into overlong Tool tracks and excursions into ten-minute instrumentals bordering on symphonies.