Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Tool
Label: ZOO entertainment / Volcano Records / BMG Music
Released: 1993
Rating: 4.8/5
At a time when grunge had hit its boiling point and punk on the radio had been tamed to fit the softer, mellowed-out demands of radio stations, Tool released their album Undertow, which, in one compact package, raises the standing of metal as a musical style that this time actually had something more substantial to offer than just worn-out clichés and naive iconography. On the way up to commercial success they hit us with menacing visuals, there to complement their nihilistic yet passion- and yearning-filled mood. Drawing in equal measure from Black Sabbath, alternative theories of science and Eastern religions and beliefs, their sonic assault is uncompromising. Provocative, enigmatic, offensive and so damn alluring. With their first release after the record Opiate, Tool laid the foundation for their wanderings along the tectonic fault lines of our subconscious, where they burrow in gradually but persistently and stay permanently. Early-nineties Los Angeles, besides the glittering kaleidoscopic colors of the Hollywood dream industry, got a raised middle finger and an open critique of the system in the form of post-grunge art-prog-alt-metal shamans who, with their very name, announce liberation from all earthly systemic shackles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63Bl5KiD90A
Compared with the rest of Tool’s studio catalog, the album is pretty raw. From the opener ‘Intolerance’ on, it’s clear they don’t plan to spare anyone. The guitar line is screaming, full of feedback, while bass and drums build a block of crushing rhythm, with Maynard’s at times fragile yet alluring vocals walled into it. A feel for rhythm and melody is the main common thread, building a sense of suspense from the opening riffs to the final cataclysm in static. ‘Prison Sex’, the second track in the sequence, settles scores with pedophilia; despite a pleasant rhythm that makes you want to dance, it forces you to listen to the lyrics, whereupon, with the melody breaking down in the second half of the song, we lapse into a state of horror and terror that creeps organically through the rest of the album. The song ‘Bottom’, for which they also roped in the legendary Henry Rollins, is a seven-minute recital and an intense marathon; on different editions of the album they even made two different versions of the spoken text with which Mr. Rollins calls on us to awaken.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hglVqACd1C8
The quality they radiate is philosophical fullness, seasoned with the complexity of sophisticated rhythmic patterns. They demand attention. They scream for it and pin us to our chairs, or wherever we happen to be listening. The artist, with their bleeding and unyielding intensity, demands a sacrifice on the listener’s part. A recipient who embraces the philosophy with open arms can become a new herald of the lachrymose gospel. The sequence is unbroken. The goal is achieved. All one can do is admit defeat, and the end result is clear. A pretty relentless embrace of hellish darkness is present right here, right now. We don’t need to wait for the afterlife. The grotesque and the shocking are here with purpose, not merely as means and end in themselves. There’s no l’art-pour-l’art emptiness. There’s only concreteness, which is what makes Tool phenomenal and, you could say, one of those who by their very presence are the elementary antipode to the vacuum of emptiness of the vast majority of hollow-sounding mourners of unheard love, bearers of nonchalant pliability, soulless zombies without an intellect of their own, all the unfulfilled melancholics who let life drain away into nothing, and everyone who exists only by half, without meaning. The last track, ‘Disgustipated’, is an open mockery of organized religions and their inability to follow the original idea, the pure essence, the foundation. With technical perfection, musical complexity and aggressive layering, Undertow not only blazed a trail for numerous bands that yearned to escape the mainstream adolescent demographic centered around shopping malls, but also provided empirical proof that metal can be intelligent, emotional and brutal all at once.
Lineup
Danny Carey – drums
Paul d’Amour – bass
Maynard James Keenan – vocals
Adam Jones – guitar
Production
Sylvia Massy & Tool
Tracklist
1. Intolerance (4:54)
2. Prison Sex (4:56)
3. Sober (5:06)
4. Bottom (7:13)
5. Crawl Away (5:29)
6. Swamp Song (5:31)
7. Undertow (5:21)
8. 40 (6:02)
9. Flood (7:45)
10. Disgustipated (15:47)
ALBUM LENGTH: 52:31
