Artist: Tool

Year: 1996

Genre: Rock

Sub-Genre: Hard

Notable Songs: Stinkfist, Forty Six and 2, Ænema

Tracks:
01 - Stinkfist (4:41)
02 - Eulogy (4:12)
03 - H (4:52)
04 - Useful Idiot (4:09)
05 - Forty Six And 2 (4:15)
06 - Message To Harry Manback (6:02)
07 - click here (4:17)
08 - Intermission (4:20)
09 - Jimmy (5:54)
10 - Die Eier Von Satan (4:56)
11 - Pushit (5:28)
11 - Cesaro Summability (5:28)
11 - Ænema (5:28)
11 - (-) Ions (5:28)
11 - Third Eye (5:28)

Enhanced: No

Cover Art/Booklet: The jewel case is really cool. It's like those rulers you have in third grade where the plastic is all rigid and the image behind it animates or changed color depend on how you move it. On the tool CD, there is a white box with some sort of energy coming out of it and green eyes float about. Inside the sleeve there are two more and a picture of Bill Hicks (a comedian Tool liked), and two people with a third eye. The circle that holds the CD also has an animating picture of California's coast disappearing.

Details:
    I had only heard a few Tool songs before I bought this CD. The music videos are very cool though; one of the last forms of media that still uses stop-frame animation. But I see why, I tried doing a minute-long animation for a class and that was annoying, even at 15 frames per second. If you want to view that for any reason, it's here. (5.7Mb) Anyway, I was able to avoid buying anything for a long while because, I could listen to this great CD for nights on end without getting sick of it. I still haven't, and I have the attention span of a cat.

Opposed to a CD which is just a bunch of songs, Ænima is broken up by these different ambient tracks, all of them very different, and makes the CD flow better. It's also not a strick heavy or metal CD, given there should be enough there to keep any hard rock fan happy, it has more of a melody than their previous two CD's. The instumental part as well is very different from most traditional guitars and bass. All in all, it is a fine piece of work that is well structured and is just plain good music.

Bottom Line: This has to be the best CD that I have ever bought. The replay value streches into the years range, and the non-music tracks do a very good job of breaking it up from just being a collection of songs.