— ₊† 𓂀 Heaven rants about Tool: — ✚
one of my many special interests is in Tool, and I’ll be using this to dump all my thoughts on any song out of their discography that interests me here. A lot of these are my personal interpretation of songs, do not take anything as said and done, go listen and make your own ideas!!! thats the point of the band!!!!! ♡ I own 10,000 Days & Ænima on CD (✦) Go listen to Maynard’s other projects: Puscifer & A Perfect Circle.
My FAVOURITE album by Tool is ÆNIMA My favourite track from their discography is Vicarious off 10,000 Days or Eulogy off Ænima. I also ADORE UNDERTOW and would kill a man to own it on CD.
I like Fear Inoculum & Lateralus. I swear. The Grudge, The Patient, Pnuema & The Tempest are my favourites from those albums. ☆
I adore A Perfect Circle as well. My favourite album is Thirteenth Step & Track is Passive off eMOTIVe. I like Puscifer too I just don’t listen to that one much , i swear I’ll get around to it (says the beetle of lies and falsehoods).
I could talk soooo long about the meanings of TOOL & APC songs. And the instrumentals; lyrical wordplay, basslines & thematic undertones. I love these bands & Maynard’s career as a frontman & vocalist. (His wine making endeavours are also somewhat interesting, I must admit.)
quick aside: The name ‘Tool’ is a double entrendre joke from the band. It is of course, meant to reference a penis (as is clear in their original 91-92 logo), but also serves as an explanation of the band, that being a tool for analysing the self and existence, a way lens to see the world differently.
Ænima ー My favourite Tool album by far (i would kill to own this on vinyl). Aenima is a 15 track album release on September 17th 1996, originally pressed on vinyl and then released on to cds on October 1st the same year. On the surface many of the songs - most notably Eulogy & H. - have many undertones of the perception of the self; both from your own point of view and an external. The name of the album itself is a portmanteau of ‘Anima’ the Latin word for soul & ‘Enema’.
My favourite track is Eulogy, clocking in at 8 minutes long and being the second longest off the album behind Third Eye at 13 minutes. The song is sung from the perspective of someone reading a Eulogy, neither Keenan nor the band have ever come out to confirm who the song is about, and a lot of meaning behind it is fan speculation. (this goes for most Tool songs; with some exceptions like H.) The song talks of a man who spoke of being divine, someone possessing a voice of reason in his own eyes; but in truth being more akin to an insane man rambling about the end. The song’s lyrics imply a sadness that isn’t sincere, but rather instead an appreciation of the unnameds death, a preach of his martyrdom in a bittersweet way. It is a mockery of his thought process. But it is also a critique of the mindless followers, this is made a bit more obvious in the specific line:
’ Swallowed his facade ‘cause I’m so eager to identify with someone above the ground. ‘
Highlighting peoples blind faith in god like figures, martyrs and politicians. Someone above. It speaks of his loud voice, commanding and unignorable even if you - the follower - do not care.
’ What it was that you had said to me, like I care at all. But it was so loud, And you sure could yell. ‘
It talks of the double standard of devotees as well, specifically in the last bridge of the song, repeating the words ’ don’t you step out of line ‘, pushing the perspective of perfection on both ends. The followers of an ideal refuse to see it in any other way than what they learnt; to them that is perfection, and anything out of line is false or ignored. The very next line solidifies this, to both the martyr and the follower.
’ You’ve claimed all this time that you would die for me ‘ ’ Why then are you so surprised when you hear your own eulogy? ‘
People can preach their views, loud and above, but will fall when they must face the consequences of their actions or when it comes time to truly act on them. It’s a call out of the performativeness on both ends of the spectrum of the believer and the preacher. The song continues in this perspective of both for a moment, then dives back into criticising the martyr from the pov of the follower losing faith in their icon.
A reoccurring line throughout the song is ‘he had a lot to say, he had a lot of nothing to say,’ usually ending in ‘we’ll miss him.’ but that additional line is absent here. Instead transitioning into the next verse:
’ Come down, get off your fuckin’ cross. We need the fuckin’ space to nail the next fool martyr. ‘
The line is absent as they have lost faith. They do not miss him any longer, instead it’s spoken in a way of hatred. Putting into view the way these dynamics often fail, the martyr will never live up to what he preaches, and he will be replaced with someone of opposition, or someone who can. The followers faith is both unbreakable and entirely replaceable.
To ME: The entire song is a critique and commentary on positions of power. Political or religious. It doesn’t matter. These structures are shaky, reliant on false promises and convincing voices. There is no fact in God, and there is no truth in the waffling of those with padded pockets.
Third Eye ー the meaning of Third Eye is pretty heavily debated, but it has a clear message, despite being somewhat lyrically discombobulated. The song has a constant theme of drugs, specifically psychedelics and the opening of your third eye. The song opens with a Bill Hicks - originally, the songs written with reference/about Hicks were fan-esque, but later would become professional after Hicks met Maynard & the rest of the band ! - joke about drugs and the music industry. The punchline of the joke is people who demonise drug use while consuming art or media with inherent ties to or fuelled by drug usage.
And if you don’t believe drugs have done good things for us, do me a favour - go home tonight and take all your albums, all your tapes, and all your CDs and burn ‘em.
There’s a brief pause in the song for another clip I’m not sure the origin of, the structure is that of a news segment, but I have yet to find proof of it being an actual news clip rather than a stand up joke, or rip off a movie. But this one also references drug use; specifically acid, and it plays on the idea that doing drugs gives you access to a ‘higher plain’ of understanding.
“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. – There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the weather.”
The song starts with Maynard singing (its unclear if it is meant to be maynard himself speaking to us, or a character created for the song), talking about a reoccurring dream - supposedly - about a ‘bright, blue shimmering face’, grinning wide and exhibiting 3 eyes. Considering the previous verses in the song, the ‘dreaming’ in this verse is more likely drug induced; whether that be because the subject of the song is currently high or if it is a drug induced dream. The blue shimmering face is said to have ‘three warm and wild eyes’, telling us that there’s a sort of comfort but also likely an insanity in the face of this being. In many cultures, blue skin is typically denotative of deities or deity like figures/depictions of such, adding a further layer of spirituality to the lyric.
The next verse talks about submission and losing control, but choosing instead to rise up and clear your ‘vision’. The line here “rising up and wiping the webs and the dew from my withered eye,’ likely refers to the way you might perceive sudden ‘awakening’, it implies that the eye was always there however, that being on this psychedelic - likely DMT or something similar, given the reoccurring references to ‘life being a dream’ throughout the track - has allowed him to ‘clear’ this eye and see things the regular person could not. (insert bad third eye joke)
verse 3 mentions the idea of our world and life being a dream state of some sort. Referencing ‘row, row, row your boat’ without name, the man speaks of the realisation and how he’s questioned life for years, only to find out he ‘knew it all along’, it was within him.
The chorus is a little confusing, the lyrics switching quite rapidly from an introspection sort to the chorus being about ‘someone’ else. ‘It’s so good to see you,’ probably refers to the aforementioned ‘blue faced deity’, it’s been told by many who have experimented with psychedelics and seen similar hallucinations that some will feel “familiar” after the trip, like it had always sort of existed, despite knowing that it hadn’t. The singer speaks of missing the face - I assume? this might be wrong given the next lyric - but also praises coming down from the trip with ‘so glad it’s over,’ but this could also be inverse, and say the subject of the track is happy to be back in a trip, considering they are seeing/talking/at the least perceiving that same bright blue deity from the trip previous.
verse 4 gotta be my least favourite. to decipher at least. ー do you know how much thinking this takes? too much for but a little beetle such as myself. I love tool i do but fuck Maynard why are you so lyrically pretentious. (i love all his pretentious lyrics) ー it talks of a more hallucinations experienced by the singer, a dark shadow looming over-top him, taking the form of a Crow - I’m taking this lyric rather literally, so this very well could be wrong, and I will not put up a fight if it is - “black as holes within a memory, and blue as our second sun”, I think is referencing a sort of unbelievable factor to it all, its absurdist in the mere concept, however, alternatively my guess behind meaning would be the psychedelic the subject is taking is eating at his ability to comprehensively recall, this being characterised by the black crow overhead, while the blue second sun is a hallucination commonly shared by those on psychedelics with strong visual affects.
The verse continues, and this is where I believe my theory of memory recollection holds a bit more water. “I stick my hand into shadow, to pull the pieces from the sands, Which I attempt to reassemble To see just who I might have been,” the shadow is the crow, the sand referring to the common saying ‘the sands of time’ and reaching into the shadow to pull back the memory, the memory of who he is, “I do not recognize the vessel, But the eyes seem so familiar” likely talking about how by this point in the song, he’s taken too much to reassemble himself back into what he was before with his regular thought process, he is too far into believing the word is a collective, conscious dream. Utterly losing the sense of self within the sands of time and misguided spirituality. “Like phosphorescent desert buttons Singing one familiar song” is where we finally learn what the subject is taking, ‘phosphorescent desert buttons’ referring to the peyote, a desert flower that when dried exhibits very strong psychedelic affects, upon drying it loses much of its mass and resembles a ‘button’. The very next and final line of this verse, “Singing one familiar song” looping back around to the belief of the whole word being a collective in some way spiritually, a thought entirely induced by the consumption of the peyote.
It continues with talking about missing the blue face, the enlightenment they’ve come to. A peace or solace in being high again alongside comfort in what they believe is truth: that we are all one consciousness. more or less at the least. After this the song chants “prying open my third eye”, over and over, a mental break of sorts for the person singing. A finality to it all. Not the end of the song though. One of my favorite lines is next, “So good to see you once again, I thought that you were hiding, And you thought that I had run away, Chasing the tail of dogma.” I believe hiding here refers to the hallucination not appearing at times, and dogma referring to the person pushing a sort of belief as to why it hadn’t appeared. ‘chasing the tail of dogma’ specifically being the thought of returning to normal life and belief system (despite the fact they no longer can).
overall, I don’t believe this song is meant to be all too serious. It’s about drugs in the clearest way possible, lsd trips and relearning the world. A commonly shared experience in the event you take too much to really handle, many people have also said they’ve never been able to really view the world normally after the fact. Which I don’t necessarily doubt either. Considering drugs like lsd heavily alter your chemical production in your brain.
I really think the point of this song is just to talk about that. Not to be a guide or warning or anything else. Just another song talking antithetical to common life. Tool living up to its name, being a Tool to view the world in different ways. That includes heavy drug usage and abuse.
ranking every tool album & songs on the album. personal opinion for the record.
Opiate (EP) (1992):
- Part of Me
- Cold and Ugly
- Jerk-Off
- Sweat
- Hush
- Opiate
sacrilegious ratings i know. never let this guy rank again. I love everything on this ep, its hard to rank it in a way i like. but i really do prefer half the other songs over opiate, but i still love opiate ok.
Undertow (1993):
- Crawl Away
- Swamp Song
- Intolerance
- Prison Sex
- Sober
- Bottom
- 4°
- Undertow
- Disgustipated
- Flood
Ænima (1996):
- Eulogy
- Jimmy
- Hooker With A Penis
- Third Eye
- H.
- Ænima
- Forty-Six & 2
- Stinkfist
- Pushit
instrumentals: message to harry manback, die eier von satan, useful idiot, intermission, cesaro summability, (-) ions.
I love every song off this album. this was a hard ranking.
Lateralus (2001):
- Parabola
- The Patient
- Laterlus
- Ticks & Leeches
- The Grudge
- Disposition
- Parabol
instrumentals: triad, faaip de oiad, eon blue apocalypse, mantra.
10,000 Days (2006):
- Jambi
- Vicarious
- Right in Two
- Wings For Marie pt 1
- Rosetta Stoned
- The Pot
- Wings For Marie pt 2
- Intension
instrumentals: lipan conjuring, viginti ties, lost keys.
Fear Inoculum (2019):
- 7empest
- Pnuema
- Invincible
- Descending
- Fear Inoculum
- Culling Voices
instrumentals: litanie contre la peur, legion inoculant, chocolate chip trip, mockingbeat.
my credentials
txto