Tool - Undertow (1994)
- This is thick, low-ended, musically intricate but ultimately really, really bass-heavy metal.
- The album cover is about perfect - if you get the general vibe of bleak, despairing nihilism, then the message has already been conveyed.
- The vocals are angry-spoken / shouted, but delivered with a chilling reserve that gives the enterprise a scary-in-its-sincerity edge.
- These alterna-rockers, um, don't like the mindless mainstream very much, particularly their religious subset.
- It's rife with thudding riffage measured by melody - the opening tracks are where the action is decidedly at, with "Sober" blowing away the field - it was the hit single that shot this band to MTV prominence, though there are plenty of gripping, thrilling moments on the disc besides.
- An hour of it is a bit much, and some of the spoken word experimentalism toward the end gets a little too creepy for its own good. The end result is powerful if front-loaded album that permits some thick-as-mud opportunities to express all kinds of frustrated angst. It's not hard to see how this got so popular, but the message paints itself into a bit of a corner.
Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "Sober"
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