Lateralus by Tool

Lateralus, Tool's third album, came out on Volcano Entertainment on May 15, 2001, and it's the sound of a band chasing complexity like a mystic chases a vision. They cut it between October 2000 and January 2001 at Cello Studios in Hollywood and at The Hook, Big Empty Space and The Lodge in North Hollywood, co-producing with David Bottrill, who had also produced Ænima. It would be the last time he worked with them.

This is progressive metal with its eyes closed and its fists clenched: long, patient songs that coil and uncoil, rhythms that tangle you up and then suddenly click, guitars that grind instead of shred, and drums that seem to be working out a math problem in real time. "Schism" is the gateway, lurching between tension and release with a bass line you could hang a bridge on, "Parabola" swells into something close to euphoria, the title track spirals patiently upward, and "Ticks and Leeches" is pure, blistering venom.

For a record this dense and demanding, the numbers were startling. It entered the Billboard 200 at number one, with over 555,200 copies gone in week one, and "Schism" won the band the Grammy for Best Metal Performance in 2002. It has since gone triple platinum in the US and double platinum in Australia and Canada, and in 2005 it was reissued as a limited two-picture-disc vinyl set in a holographic gatefold sleeve.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.