Tool spent the first day of the Lateralus sessions in the studio lounge, kicking and screaming, laughing and crying at each other, and never once set foot in the tracking room. Producer David Bottrill sat in the studio fiddling with equipment until he finally sent someone in to see what was going on. As Justin Chancellor told Kerrang! twenty years later, "That person was told to leave."
The record that came out of that room runs to 78 minutes and 51 seconds, about as close to the edge of a compact disc as the manufacturer would allow. It was trailed with a fake title designed to poison Napster, wrapped in Alex Grey's see-through anatomy, and still debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in May 2001, knocking Destiny's Child off the top. Lateralus pushed Tool further from alternative metal and into progressive rock territory, and by Chancellor's own account, if the band had not worked through the strain of A Perfect Circle and come back together, they would never have finished it.
Lateralus Album Facts
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Artist | Tool |
| Album | Lateralus |
| Release Date | 15 May 2001 |
| Label | Volcano |
| Producer(s) | Tool and David Bottrill |
| Studio(s) | Cello and The Hook (tracking); Big Empty Space; The Lodge; Larrabee North (mixing); vocals at Keenan's home |
| Genre / Subgenre | Progressive metal, alternative metal, progressive rock, art rock |
| Track Count | 13 |
| Total Runtime | 78:51 |
| Billboard 200 Peak | 1 |
| UK Albums Chart Peak | 16 |
| Other Notable Chart Peaks | Australia 1, Canada 1, Poland 1, New Zealand 2, Norway 2, Germany 5 |
| Certifications | RIAA 3x Platinum; ARIA 2x Platinum; Music Canada 2x Platinum; BPI Gold |
| Estimated Sales | 2,609,000 in the US by July 2010 |
| Key Singles | "Schism", "Parabola", "Lateralus" |
The Last of the Class of '93
When Spin caught up with Tool in January 2001, hunched over a mixing desk with Bottrill, Danny Carey reeled off the casualties among their peers: "Alice in Chains, Helmet, Soundgarden, Nirvana, and now Rage." The heavy, art-minded alternative scene Tool had come up in was gone. In its place stood the nu-metal of Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park and Papa Roach, and Chancellor admits he felt "a little lost at sea in amongst everything else."
The other new force was file-sharing. While Metallica tried to sue Napster out of existence, Tool chose to mess with it. Keenan had already made his position plain to NY Rock in 2000: "The ones who get hurt by MP3s are not so much companies or the business, but the artists, people who are trying to write songs." Tool's albums would stay off streaming services until August 2019.
Tool's Story Up to Lateralus
Ænima, released in September 1996, had made Tool leaders of the alternative metal pack, won a Grammy for "Ænema", and in 1998 the band co-headlined Ozzfest. It was also the first Tool record for Chancellor, who had replaced original bassist Paul D'Amour when the album was already half-written. "I was the new working lad who was brought in to sweep the floor," he says.
Then the lawyers arrived. In late 1997 Volcano, successor to Tool's defunct label Zoo, sued the band for entertaining offers from other labels. Tool countersued, arguing Volcano had failed to exercise a renewal option and they were free to leave. The deadlock dragged on for more than a year before both sides settled in December 1998 on a three-record joint venture. Through all of it the band barely wrote, unwilling to hand new songs to the wrong label. In 2000 they fired manager Ted Gardner, who sued them over his commission.
The members scattered into side projects. Keenan formed A Perfect Circle with Tool guitar tech Billy Howerdel in 1999, Adam Jones played with the Melvins' Buzz Osborne and Carey drummed with Jello Biafra. Some fans read A Perfect Circle as Keenan walking out. Chancellor remembers the band asking whether they could finish their own record first, and Keenan telling them to finish the music while he got on with A Perfect Circle. The Salival box set in late 2000 put the break-up rumours to bed, and this time Chancellor's bandmates told him something new: "We want you to help us go somewhere else, we want to become something else with you."
Writing and the Systema Encéphale Hoax
Most of Lateralus was written in Carey's dark Hollywood rehearsal studio, reached through an alley behind a health food store and decorated, Modern Drummer reported, with skeletons, gargoyles, a Jacob's Ladder and a large Enochian "magic board". The method was simple and slow: jam a riff for hours with the tape running, then go back and catalogue the jewels. "There's never any mention of time signatures, ever," Carey insisted, which is a remarkable thing to say about this album.
"The Grudge" was the first song finished and "Triad" the last. Keenan, out on the road with A Perfect Circle, wrote lyrics in the back of the tour bus as the music reached him, and in his book A Perfect Union of Contrary Things later called the album "a soundtrack for healing".
On 11 January 2001 the official Tool website announced the new album as Systema Encéphale, with a tracklist including "Pain Canal", "Lactation", "Numbereft" and "Riverchrist". Napster promptly filled with bogus files carrying those names. A month later management confirmed the real title, Lateralus, and a real 13-song tracklist. Keenan explained that the name nodded to the vastus lateralis thigh muscle but was "more about lateral thinking". One title also moved: on 11 February the song listed as "Resolution" became "Reflection".
"In that album, you can hear the struggle to pull it all together, the tension between everything, and that's something that's quite beautiful about it, too. The struggle grabs you."
Justin Chancellor, Kerrang!, 2021
Recording Lateralus
Sessions ran from October 2000 to January 2001. After the lost first day, Bottrill put a simple question to the band: "Are we doing this?" They said yes, went home, and came back the next morning. "It was a clean slate with everything," says Chancellor, though he remembers the months that followed as "struggling over parts, fighting with each other, coming to a solution".
Drums went down first, in the big room at Cello, the former Ocean Way room where Frank Sinatra had recorded. The band had a little more time and a little bigger budget than on Ænima, and Carey used it. Neumann U87s went on the top and bottom of every tom, the basic drum sound took a day, and most songs needed about three takes. His main kit was a Sonor Bubinga Signature set, with a 1977 stainless-steel Ludwig Octaplus brought out for "The Grudge" and "Ticks & Leeches".
Tape Op's review of the album sets out how the rest worked. Basic tracks were cut to analogue tape at The Hook and Cello, and the band brought in home recordings for some of the segues. Every vocal was recorded in Keenan's home loft on his own Pro Tools system, which left Bottrill "shuffling hard disks up and down Highway 101". Wikipedia also lists Big Empty Space and The Lodge among the album's studios. The mix was done at Larrabee North.
For the first time, Tool stopped worrying about whether every sound could be reproduced on stage. Keenan stacked harmonies and doubled his vocals and Jones layered more guitar overdubs.
"The Tibetan monk sounds you hear on the record are just me growling through a tube. That was the initial sample, and then I overdubbed an Oberheim through a Vocoder."
Danny Carey, Modern Drummer, 2001
Carey also sampled a wrecked piano by banging on its strings, crackle from a Jacob's Ladder transformer, didgeridoo and found sound. Bottrill, who rarely needed to intervene in Tool's arrangements, says he helped more with song structure this time, and campaigned to lose a section of the title track that Carey loved. He won that argument.
Jones later told Guitar World that everything that could go wrong did, "from little things like broken gear to bigger issues like getting involved in a lawsuit with our label." On the flight to the mastering studio in Maine, he told the band he wouldn't be surprised if the plane crashed. There, the band wrote the song titles on slips of paper and shuffled them into a running order, which turned out to be almost exactly the order they had written the songs in. Many of the planned segues were cut at the mastering stage, and the master was made with HDCD encoding. "The manufacturer would only guarantee us up to 79 minutes," Carey said. "We thought we'd give them two seconds of breathing room."
Personnel & Credits
| Role | Player | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Core band | ||
| Vocals | Maynard James Keenan | Vocals tracked at home on Pro Tools |
| Guitars | Adam Jones | Also art direction |
| Bass | Justin Chancellor | Joined during the Ænima sessions |
| Drums, percussion, samples | Danny Carey | Simmons, vocoder and found-sound samples |
| Additional musician | ||
| Machines | Statik (Collide) | "Triad" |
| Production & engineering | ||
| Producers | Tool, David Bottrill | Bottrill also produced Ænima |
| Engineering, mixing | David Bottrill | Mixed at Larrabee North |
| Engineering | Vince DeFranco | Credited with "neurocistance" |
| Mastering | Bob Ludwig | Mastering engineer |
| Artwork | ||
| Illustrations | Alex Grey | Cover and translucent insert |
| Art direction | Adam Jones | Anatomical overlay concept |
The credits are almost as tight as the band. The only outside player is Statik of Collide, credited with "machines" on "Triad". Bottrill, hired for Ænima on the strength of his work with King Crimson and Peter Gabriel, would not return: Joe Barresi produced the next two Tool records.
The Songs on Lateralus
| # | Title | Writer(s) | Length | Single? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Grudge | Carey, Chancellor, Keenan, Jones | 8:36 | First song written; mostly in five | |
| 2 | Eon Blue Apocalypse | Carey, Chancellor, Keenan, Jones | 1:04 | Instrumental segue | |
| 3 | The Patient | Carey, Chancellor, Keenan, Jones | 7:13 | Chancellor's tone-control wah on bass | |
| 4 | Mantra | Carey, Chancellor, Keenan, Jones | 1:12 | Instrumental | |
| 5 | Schism | Carey, Chancellor, Keenan, Jones | 6:47 | Yes | Grammy winner, 2002 |
| 6 | Parabol | Carey, Chancellor, Keenan, Jones | 3:04 | ||
| 7 | Parabola | Carey, Chancellor, Keenan, Jones | 6:03 | Yes | Modified drop-B tuning |
| 8 | Ticks & Leeches | Carey, Chancellor, Keenan, Jones | 8:10 | Reworked from an Opiate-era song | |
| 9 | Lateralus | Carey, Chancellor, Keenan, Jones | 9:24 | Yes | Working title "9-8-7" |
| 10 | Disposition | Carey, Chancellor, Keenan, Jones | 4:46 | Part one of a 20-minute piece | |
| 11 | Reflection | Carey, Chancellor, Keenan, Jones | 11:07 | Listed as "Resolution" until February 2001 | |
| 12 | Triad | Carey, Chancellor, Keenan, Jones | 8:46 | Last song written | |
| 13 | Faaip de Oiad | Carey, Chancellor, Keenan, Jones | 2:39 | Enochian for "The Voice of God" |
"The Grudge" opens the album with Carey's tribal patterns, mostly in five, and Keenan's lyric about the astrological Saturn return, the idea that every 28 years you either let go of past delusions or sink. Chancellor calls it "brittle and brutal", the dark starting point of an album that ends up somewhere hopeful.
"Schism" began, Chancellor says, with a "twiddly" bass riff that came from fooling around. One analysis in Guitar One counted 47 changes of metre. In a 2023 interview Bottrill revealed that Keenan's first lyric was explicitly about the strain between himself and Jones and the band as a whole; Jones felt it was too close to home, and after a long band meeting Keenan rewrote it as a more universal song about a relationship falling apart.
"Parabol" and "Parabola" are, in David Fricke's phrase, "distorted reflections of each other": a hushed, echo-drenched prayer and then the same idea detonated. The Tibetan monk sounds on the record (Modern Drummer places them in "Parabola") are Carey growling through a tube, layered with an Oberheim through a vocoder.
"Ticks & Leeches", in 7/4, was reworked from a song the band had played around the time of Opiate. Keenan recorded its vocal after all the others and wrecked his voice doing it. "The band can hassle me all they want about Ticks & Leeches, I won't do it live," he told Oor in May 2001. "Three weeks it cost me."
"Lateralus" is the song that launched a thousand forum threads. It started life as "9-8-7", named after its time signatures, until a friend of Carey's pointed out that 987 is a Fibonacci number. Keenan then built his opening syllables on the sequence: "Black" (1), "then" (1), "white are" (2), "all I see" (3), "in my infancy" (5), and so on.
"The original riff was a bar of nine, a bar of eight and a bar of seven, and the idea was that it feels like it's folding in on itself."
Justin Chancellor, Kerrang!, 2021
Chancellor is quick to add that the sequence "is not mathematically correct" throughout the song, and Keenan has since cooled on the idea, telling Joe Rogan in 2017 that the Fibonacci gimmick was "a very pedestrian, sophomoric move" and "kind of a dick joke".
"Disposition", "Reflection" and "Triad" were written as one 20-minute song and split up because it felt too long. "Reflection" includes Carey's samples of a destroyed piano, and Carey called it "a departure for us", more trance than slam. The closer, "Faaip de Oiad", began when one of Carey's old reverb units started to fail late one night and he hit record on the DAT. Over it sits a 1997 call to Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM from a panicking man who claimed to have worked at Area 51.
Lateralus Artwork & Packaging
Alex Grey met Adam Jones at his Los Angeles exhibition in 1999, and Jones later came to him with an anatomical concept for the cover. Jones wanted the artwork printed on clear plastic pages so the images could be layered. Grey has admitted he had never heard the music.
"For Lateralus, Adam had an idea of the anatomical overlays and then with a bit of feedback, he let me do my thing. I came up with the flaming eye as a way to light up the creative centers of a person."
Alex Grey, Revolver, 2019
The front shows a flayed figure in profile, muscles and blue veins exposed, with a striped column running up through the head and body. One hand is raised with a flaming eye in its palm and another flaming eye burns at the throat. Behind the figure are concentric red rings and a border of flame shapes with blue eyes, with the black Tool logo at the top and "lateralus" lettered along the bottom. On physical copies the translucent insert flips open to reveal different layers of the body, and the word "God" is hidden in the brain matter on the final layer. The A.V. Club called it "immaculately packaged" on release.
Release & Reception
Lateralus came out on 15 May 2001 and went straight in at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with more than 555,200 copies sold, ahead of Missy Elliott's Miss E... So Addictive. It topped the charts in Australia and Canada, finished 2001 at No. 47 on Billboard's year-end list and was certified double platinum in the US by August 2003.
| Chart (2001) | Peak |
|---|---|
| US Billboard 200 | 1 |
| Australia | 1 |
| Canada | 1 |
| Poland | 1 |
| New Zealand | 2 |
| Norway | 2 |
| Germany | 5 |
| Netherlands | 7 |
| UK | 16 |
Kerrang! gave it 5/5, called it "the most perfectly played, perfectly produced record you're likely to hear this or any other year" and concluded it was "one of the greatest albums you'll hear this lifetime". Rolling Stone's David Fricke gave four stars, warning that listeners would spend a long time wondering "What the fuck is going on here?" before the album revealed its "suitelike purpose". The Los Angeles Times found it "neither a lesser version of the old Tool model nor a massive step forward". Pitchfork scored it 1.9, with Brent DiCrescenzo complaining that Tool had stretched their "wanking sludge" out "to the maximum digital capacity of a compact disc". Metacritic's average from 15 reviews sits at 75.
Kerrang! named it album of the year, and Q included it in its 50 best of 2001. In 2002 "Schism" won the Grammy for Best Metal Performance, beating Black Sabbath, Slayer, Slipknot and System of a Down.
Singles & Music Videos
| Single | Released | US Hot 100 | US Alternative | US Mainstream Rock |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Schism | 15 January 2001 | 67 | 2 | 2 |
| Parabola | January 2002 | 31 | 10 | |
| Lateralus | February 2002 | 18 | 14 |
"Schism" spent 20 weeks on the Hot 100 and stalled at No. 2 on both rock charts behind Staind's "It's Been Awhile". It remained Tool's only Hot 100 entry until "Fear Inoculum" in 2019. Adam Jones directed its video with stop-motion animation and live actors, and despite its length it won heavy rotation.
The "Parabola" video runs over ten minutes because it includes "Parabol". English musician Tricky plays the man at its centre, and Alex Grey designed the 90-second finale, a Kundalini ascent into what he calls the "Universal Mind Lattice". Both videos reappeared on DVD singles on 20 December 2005, with Lustmord remixes and commentaries by David Yow and Jello Biafra.
The Lateralus Tour
The tour ran from 2001 until November 2002, with a rotating cast of support acts:
- Fantômas and Tomahawk
- Meshuggah, whose Tomas Haake joined Tool for "Triad" in autumn 2002
- Tricky, who also guested on "Reflection"
- The Melvins, Cosmic Psychos, Cortizone and Pablo
- King Crimson, for a ten-show joint run in August 2001
The King Crimson shows opened at Red Rocks in Colorado, with Robert Fripp playing soundscapes in the interval. Keenan was not shy about the debt.
"For me, being on stage with King Crimson is like Lenny Kravitz playing with Led Zeppelin, or Britney Spears onstage with Debbie Gibson."
Maynard James Keenan, on stage with King Crimson, reported by VH1, 2001
Two days after the 11 September attacks, Tool played Grand Rapids, Michigan, where Keenan told the crowd he hoped the show had been "somewhat of a soundtrack for healing". That same month they made their debut at Madison Square Garden. The "Disposition", "Reflection" and "Triad" run became a set piece for guests including Mike Patton, Dave Lombardo, Buzz Osborne and members of Isis and King Crimson.
Reissues, Streaming & Afterlife
A double-vinyl, four-picture-disc edition went first to fan club members as a limited signed release and then to the public on 23 August 2005. To fit the sides, "Disposition" moves to track 8, which breaks its segue into "Reflection". After the catalogue reached streaming services on 2 August 2019, Lateralus climbed back to No. 2 on Billboard's Hard Rock and Top Rock Albums charts.
- "Schism" and "Parabola" are both playable in Guitar Hero World Tour.
- "Parabola" woke astronaut Robert Behnken on Space Shuttle mission STS-130 in 2010.
- Loudwire named "Lateralus" the No. 1 metal song of the 21st century.
The Legacy of Lateralus by Tool
Lateralus has only grown in stature. Loudwire named it the No. 1 hard rock or metal album of the 21st century in 2016, Rolling Stone placed it No. 32 among the 50 greatest prog rock albums in 2015, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's Definitive 200 ranked it No. 123. It has since gone triple platinum in the US.
Its tourmates shaped what came next. The influence of Fantômas and Meshuggah fed into 10,000 Days, which debuted at No. 1 in 2006 with 564,000 first-week sales. Fans, meanwhile, never stopped digging. The "Holy Gift" theory holds that reordering the 13 tracks by the Fibonacci sequence reveals a hidden album. Asked about it in 2021, Chancellor smiled: "I can neither confirm nor deny." Asked what Lateralus's gravestone would say, he had a simpler answer: "It's got a big spiral on it!"
Things You Might Not Know About Lateralus
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| A birthday release | In February 2001 Lateralus was still due on 17 April, which happened to be Maynard James Keenan's birthday. It eventually arrived on 15 May. |
| The cat on track 4 | Keenan told Japan's Buzz magazine in 2001 that "Mantra" is the sound of him squeezing one of his Siamese cats, slowed right down. |
| A misspelled title track | Early CDs list track 9 as "Lateralis". By the time the band noticed, two million copies had already been printed. |
| A Napster impostor | One fake Tool track doing the rounds online, "Prove It", turned out to be Chevelle's "Prove to You". |
| Toms in D minor | Carey tuned his toms to the notes of a D minor triad, D, F and A, to match songs in that key. |
| A magic board in the studio | Carey confirmed he brought his Enochian magic board, inscribed with angels' names, into the studio for the sessions. |
| Thanks to Satan | Accepting the 2002 Grammy, Carey thanked his parents and Satan, and Chancellor thanked his dad "for doing my mom". |
Listen to the Riffology Podcast
If Lateralus has you reaching for the spiral, there is plenty more where this came from. The Riffology podcast digs into the stories behind the records that shaped rock and metal, and it is available on all major podcast platforms.
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