Lateralus (2001)
Lateralus is a 2001 alternative metal album by Tool.
Tool's third album is built like a puzzle. Released in 2001, it stretches past seventy-nine minutes of shifting time signatures, and the title track famously arranges its syllables to the Fibonacci sequence. Maynard James Keenan sings less about stories than about consciousness, evolution, and letting go of fear, while Danny Carey's drumming and Adam Jones's guitar coil around each other in long, deliberate builds. Nothing here rushes. The record rewards patience and repeat listens, treating an album as a single meditative arc rather than a set of singles.
Quick answers
What is Lateralus about?
Tool's third album is built like a puzzle. Released in 2001, it stretches past seventy-nine minutes of shifting time signatures, and the title track famously arranges its syllables to the Fibonacci sequence. Maynard James Keenan sings less about stories than about consciousness, evolution, and letting go of fear, while Danny Carey's drumming and Adam Jones's guitar coil around each other in long, deliberate builds. Nothing here rushes. The record rewards patience and repeat listens, treating an album as a single meditative arc rather than a set of singles.
When was Lateralus released?
Lateralus was released in 2001.
Who made Lateralus?
Lateralus is by Tool.
Similar albums
Explore Lateralus guides
A few thoughts on Lateralus
This is music for losing yourself in big questions. Pair it with 2001: A Space Odyssey, whose slow, transcendent scale matches the album's reach. The game Journey offers a wordless, meditative climb in the same spirit, and Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain chases the same ideas about death and letting go.
Slow-building, cerebral works about consciousness and the vastness of it all
Lateralus treats seventy-nine minutes as one unbroken meditation on evolution and letting go of fear, and these picks chase that same unhurried, cosmic scale. Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Aronofsky's The Fountain both slow down to stare at mortality and transcendence, Journey turns a wordless desert trek into something spiritual, and Kid A trades songs for mood and disorientation.
Radiohead's most restless, boundary-pushing stretch of albums
Tool built Lateralus by refusing to rush anything, and Radiohead's own catalog shows a band making that same demand on itself, album after album. Pablo Honey's straightforward guitar rock gave way to The Bends' ambition, then Amnesiac's fractured electronics and Hail to the Thief's sprawl, each record pushing further from where the band started.