Undertow recently turned 24 years old, which strangely meant there were a lot of articles reflecting on the album; they were interesting to read. I've been listening to Undertow for 16 of those years, having bought the cd for £5 at a record fair back in 2001. I'd bought Ænima a few months earlier on the back of a review in Kerrang! Magazine that made it sound like an incredibly appealing album, plus I knew their new album was imminent so wanted to be familiar with the last before I heard Lateralus. After those two, I bought the Salival boxset (an excellent find in a record shop in France - it was impossible to find in the UK, but this shop had two copies just sat on the shelf) and heard some of the band's earlier work for the first time on the dvd. Hearing Prison Sex and Sober for the first time, alongside their creepy music videos was quite something.
I always enjoyed Undertow, but very differently to how I enjoyed the other albums. I've always felt it's the hardest to get into, despite having fewer songs than a lot of their other albums (although some of those are filler-noise tracks). In reality, all of the nine songs on the first three sides are solid, great Tool songs. Perhaps that was what it was - they'd released an album of fairly equal songs, rather than an album with a few designed to really shine (which I'd certainly say is true of the others).
Side A is an excellent side of vinyl - Intolerance, Prison Sex and Sober are all huge songs. Sober is the only one I'd describe as "catchy", but makes for an incredible single from the album. Bottom is a great song too, and probably would have been a catchier single than Prison Sex, except I imagine the swearing in the chorus ("Shit ends up at the bottom") would have been too much for MTV. Plus, the Henry Rollins verse might have been even stranger on a single. As it is, I love that little break and how the vocals gradually change from Henry's spoken words to Maynard's huge voice (which really shines here for the first time on the album). Side C is pretty solid too, and Flood is where the album probably should have ended. Disgustipated is saved for track 69 on the cd, but here we get it nicely on one side of vinyl. The actual song part of Disgustipated (after the baa-ing and rant, but before the crickets) isn't bad, but feels a bit like a half-formed idea of a song, rather than a song itself. The crickets then sing for what feels like forever before a little spoken word monologue; it's a strange and rather unnecessary way to finish an otherwise great album. I pretty much always skip it out.
On the whole, the album feels like the logical step between Opiate and Ænima - the songs are all longer and fuller than those on the EP, but not quite as much so as they'd be on the subsequent albums. They're also that much more serious than on Opiate, a theme they'd maintain (excluding the fact that Disgustipated is track 69, of course). As much as I love the later albums, I'd love to hear Tool write more songs like they did in this era. They wait so long between albums that I think people would be pissed if the next album wasn't an epic like the last few, but I think it'd be great for them to revisit songs like these.
I bought this vinyl copy on the same day I got the Opiate 12", in Newbury Comics in Boston. I was pretty happy to find them - they weren't so readily available in the UK and I hoped it would be the beginning of a Tool record collection that never really got off the ground (the subsequent LPs were very hard to find and often bootlegged. In my local record shop in Canberra they had some very pricey copies of Lateralus that I could never quite bring myself to buy. I think I was going to reward myself with it after some exams, but by that time it'd gone). The "inappropriate artwork" from the cd sleeve is missing here, as there is no insert with the LP. It was definitely a good purchase, and I'm pleased to have it amongst my collection. I've seen reissues knocking around record shops in recent months (maybe that was why there are so many articles about the album) but it's hard to say whether I'd have still picked it up, knowing that my Tool LP collection would never be complete in any decent way.
Format: Double 12"
Tracks: 10
Cost: £10.50 new
Bought: Newbury Comics, Boston
When: 05/08/02
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no
