Tool - Undertow

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

Tool - 10,000 Days

This record is a bit of an oddity in my collection, in that it's a shameless bootleg of an album that was never pressed on vinyl. I largely avoid buying bootlegs for all the usual reasons (quality, ripping off the band, they just feel wrong, etc) but I still bought this one despite knowing full-well that it was a bootleg; I'm not entirely sure why. 

The weekend before last I was in Manchester visiting my friend Aled and going to see Neutral Milk Hotel. Sunday turned into a pretty-much perfect day - I went record shopping in the morning, spent the afternoon in some nice pubs drinking beer in the sun, ate "Manchester's best burger" and saw Neutral Milk Hotel for the first time (in a very lovely venue). The midnight bus ride back to Oxford followed by a full day at work took away from the enjoyment a little, but it was all good. My record shopping saw me visit three shops: Piccadilly Records, Vinyl Exchange and Vinyl Revival. The last of the three, Vinyl Revival, I knew as soon as I walked in wasn't going to be great. This happens a lot - I walk into a record shop and instantly know there isn't going to be much for me. There are usually over-full boxes of knackered 1960's LPs and a "metal" section that contains nothing released later than 1989. Vinyl Revival had that vibe, but did have one box of fairly recent albums that weren't in horrendously shitty condition. I felt guilty not buying anything (which is becoming a problem) and, in the box of not-shit records, was this bootleg copy of 10,000 Days. Interestingly, he also had a bootleg of Lateralus and a small handful of other tempting, mostly-bootleg albums. At £20 I should probably have left it behind, but unless it ever gets a proper vinyl release (which it might do given how strong the reissue market is these days) I figured I'd never get another copy. Plus the shit-record-store guilt. So I bought it.

Addressing the bootleg issue first, the quality here isn't too shitty at all. Maybe a more trained ear could pick any flaws out, but it sounds fine to me. The only times you really notice that it's a bootleg are on the run-off groove (which makes quite a racket) and on the rough edges to the vinyl when you turn it over. The sleeve looks pretty decent, albeit quite minimal - the cd of 10,000 Days had quite the fancy packaging. The back of the record says "For promotional use only", but I've been around too long to fall for that.

10,000 Days is Tool's most recent release, which is ridiculous when you recall that it came out 8 years ago. I was living in Australia at the time and that feels like a lifetime ago already. I remember going into town the week it came out to buy the cd and having a very excited conversation with some guy I half-knew about how good it was. A few weeks later I left Australia and saw Tool play Roskilde Festival, a memory that's surprisingly fresh in my mind. It's a lot heavier than the two albums that came before it and, at times, almost sounds more like The Melvins than it does Tool. A lot of the quirks that featured on Lateralus (songs designed to be played at the same time, Fibonacci rhythms) are missing and replaced with huge riffs. I kind of miss those little oddities, but sometime it's nice to appreciate a band for the talented musicians they are. Highlights for me are Vicarious, The Pot and Rosetta Stoned but Tool really cut out the filler here and squeezed in a lot of strong songs. Makes me hope they come out of their slumber soon.

Format: Double 12"

Tracks: 11

Cost: £20 new

Bought: Vinyl Revival, Manchester

When: 18/05/14

Colour: Transparent red

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Tool - Opiate

I'll get straight to the point here: this record has a double-grove and that is very fucking cool. Put the needle down on one groove of side B and you hear the live recording of Cold and Ugly, as you'd expect; move the needle over one groove (easier said than done) and you hear the bonus track The Gaping Lotus Experience. "Hidden" tracks on cds were pretty popular at the time, but the fact that someone went to such effort to include that song here, in a far more exciting way, never fails to please me. The first time I played it, I unexpectedly heard The Gaping Lotus Experience, but I had equal odds of hearing the song I was supposed to hear. Can you imagine the confusion you landed the needle on Cold and Ugly the first few times and then accidentally discovered the bonus track?

I'll save the usual chat about how I got into Tool for another time. Opiate is a great little EP - six short songs about society and religion from before Tool forgot how to write short songs. I'm a fan of their later albums too, but Opiate is perfect for those times when you don't have 70 minutes to spare but still want to listen to Tool. The lyrics are witty (see Hush and Jerk-Off) and the drums are hit hard. I'd had Opiate on cd for a few years when I found this copy in the excellent Massachusetts mini-chain Newbury Comics. They also had Undertow and the first Rage Against the Machine album on vinyl, so I picked up all three in a little, early-90's, major-label metal shopping spree. All three are records I'm pleased to have had in my collection for the past 11 and half years.

Format: 12", double groove on side B
Tracks: 7
Cost: £4.90 new
Bought: Newbury Comics, Boston
When: 05/08/02
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no