Challenge accepted
Having said that, I've hardly ever succeeded in converting anyone to music I love, so I will not be offended if I fail!
Tool began as a much less polished band - as so many bands do - I guess you might call it "angry".
Opiate was released in 1992, followed by
Undertow in 1993. I am a big fan of
Undertow but the themes on this album are very strong and mainly concerned with abuse of some kind.
Aenima was their breakthrough release in 1996. It has some of my favourite songs on it, and it starts exploring some of the concepts on their next album
Lateralus in 2001, which is way less angry, and way more spiritual / philosophical. It's also where their songs started increasing in length consistently. There are long songs on the previous albums, but this one has more consistently long songs on it.
This was followed in 2006 with
10,000 Days which I believe is roughly how long Maynard's (the lead singer's) mother suffered an illness before she died. This also has some of my favourite Tool songs.
And finally, in 2019, they released
Fear Innoculum. The song length has increased again on this album.
As I mentioned before, Tool needs to be listened to, for me anyway. If it is playing in the background, you might find it annoying - it requires headphones, or a decent stereo system.
Here's a few to try out:
Off
10,000 Days
Right in Two - a masterpiece (in my opinion
)
Vicarious - a nice commentary on human's desire to view tragedies vicariously.
Off
Fear Innoculum
Pneuma - it goes for nearly 12 minutes. It has become one of my favourite Tool songs. The drumming is a feature on this one.
Invincible - another long one, but it builds beautifully.
If you got this far, I'll link a couple from
Lateralus and
Aenima
- I might edit this post with these links at some stage.