‘Ænima’ At 25: Dissecting the Turning Point of Tool

The key to understanding Ænima lies, as it ever is with Tool, in the whole picture.

Much ink and thought has been spilt on the band’s most profoundly successful and influential work in the quarter century since its release. This is, perhaps, due to the enigmatic nature of the band itself. For as much as has been spent on the consideration of Tool, the enigma central to the band lends itself to an ever-widening spiral of theories and guess work, many of them compelling, and all of them spinning wildly into varying directions.

But for all the searching for meaning that Tool and Ænima inspire, the theory of of the album—that is, what it is “about”—was written and released along with the album itself. But, to understand that, we must dig a bit deeper into understanding Tool itself.

Tool has never been the kind of band to release a mere collection of songs. Central to the tenet of the band is that each album serves as a unified whole. Which isn’t to say that the albums are necessarily “concept albums.” Far from it. While the albums might deal with conceptual themes, they don’t, in the traditional understanding of the phrase, tell a single story.

Rather, it’s important to look at each release a singular work of art unto itself. The individual songs that comprise the albums are, indeed, the most important element to understand the work as a whole, but one must also consider the package.

Admittedly, Tool have never made it easy to ignore the totality of the package. Even the works released prior to Ænima—Opiate from 1992 and Undertow from 1993—are compelling in their presentation. The artwork speaks to a larger mood and ambience in which the music is appreciated. It’s tone setting on a mass scale.

We saw this a lot in the 90s with the so-called “Rebirth of the Album.” As music moved away from the 80s, where the single was king, bands began to put more thought into the presentation of their albums and the consolidation of whole. Tool compatriots Nine Inch Nails were, no doubt, masters of this movement. But no one has quite outdone Tool.

Far from the traditional liner notes of their previous two releases, Ænima was packaged with what is now Tool’s signature album-as-work-of-art mainstay. (This trend has continued through their subsequent releases, up to Fear Inoculum’s wild inclusion of video packaging, which was somehow even more bombastic than the 3D imaging of 10,000 Days.) With its lenticular jewel case, it was (and remains) unlike anything ever produced.

That’s our first indicator of intent for the album. This was meant to be a work that grabbed and held your whole attention. This wasn’t something to put on as background; you were meant to be engrossed and transfixed. And certainly, the packaging of the liner notes makes it easy to be transfixed. Remove the CD and we could watch California fall into the ocean; before even opening the album we could watch an army of eyes fading in and out of existence.

But hidden with those notes lays a particularly dense collection of words. And in those words we see, in plain sight, what it was that Tool was on about. Beginning with a dense analysis of Ketamine from the NIH, the seemingly incomprehensible text eventually transitions into a short piece about Timothy Leary and Futants. Within that section is the line, “Every time a scientist, Philosopher, artist, or athlete pushes our thresholds to new ground the entire race evolves.”

Evolution is a theme central to the collection of songs that make up the artwork that is Ænima. This is a fitting notion given that Ænima, too, stands as a work of evolution in its own right. With their previous two albums fitting neatly into the post-grunge milieu of the metal of the era, Tool pushed themselves to new thresholds with Ænima (a push which continues to this day).

Sonically, two things changed on Ænima that helped Tool redefine who and what they were as a band. First was the addition of former Peach bassist, Justin Chancellor, who replaced previous bassist Paul D’Amour during the writing process. With many of the tracks already written, Chancellor only contributes to about half of the musical composition, but he does, however, bring a bravado to the position that would forever define Tool as a band. The second is producer David Bottrill.

As a producer, Bottrill is a master of layering his mixes with an incredible depth of sound that pushes sonic frontiers into new direction. At the time of Ænima, Bottrill was fresh off a stint with King Crimson, having produced Vrooom and Thrak (to say nothing of his work with King Crimson’s founder on the David Sylvian and Robert Fripp albums). Thrak, of course, is known for its unique and inspired production, which finds the mix splitting the group into two trios throughout the course of the record.

Which I mention only to illustrate the kind of technique and creativity Bottrill brings to the table, which serves to enhance both Ænima and Tool and speaks directly to the intent of the work itself. Under Bottrill’s wing, Tool evolves itself away from the post-grunge sound into something more unique and definitive. The hints were always there, of course. Undertow is no trivial album, but with Bottrill helping navigation, the ship sets sail in a more confident and dangerous direction.

The evolutionary themes are evident right from the start. Ænima, opening with what would be its first single, “Stinkfist,” an audacious ode to the dangers inherent in pushing the limits of stimulation using anal fisting as a metaphor.

Weirdly, the oddly poignant metaphor of anal fisting is far from the most surprising aspect of the song itself. What is, in retrospect, most shocking about “Stinkfist” is its seeming prescience. The internet was in its nascence in 1996, with social media and smart phones little but a glimmer in some techie’s eye. And yet the track presages what would become a recurring theme in lead singer Maynard James Keenan’s lyrics. The “constant overstimulation” mentioned in the song could mean anything, but over the decades we’ve seen him revisit this idea in Tool and his other musical projects. (In more direct terms than he uses on “Stinkfist,” Keenan sings “Time to put the silicon obsession down” on A Perfect Circle’s “Disillusioned,” echoing sentiments intoned on “Stinkfist.”)

We see themes of change and evolution throughout the album, used in various contexts for various meanings, but all of which ruminate on the idea of pushing forward to ideas, new understandings, and new states of being. In “H.”: “And as the walls come down and/As I look in your eyes/My fear begins to fade/Recalling all of the times/I have died/And will die/It’s all right/I don’t mind.” In “46 & 2”: “I wanna feel the change consume me/Feel the outside turning in/I wanna feel the metamorphosis and/Cleansing I’ve endured in/my shadow.”

Both songs touch upon the Jungian ideas of self and psychology that are also found in the title of the record, Ænima, of course, suggesting Jung’s theory of the anima and the animus which transcend the personality. It’s also worth pointing out that “anima” is Latin for soul, and there’s some thought that “Ænima” is a portmanteau of that and “enema,” suggesting a cleansing of the shit from one’s soul—an idea bolstered by the track “Ænema.” Weirdly, this, too, touches on Jungian themes, which advocates for exploring the darker side of one’s unconscious (which Jung called “the shadow”) for psychic healing purposes.

The enigma of Tool of course lends itself to multiple interpretations of their work and their music, but it’s difficult to ignore the constant use of change and evolution as a metaphor in Ænima. Beyond the metaphoric, however, there’s the very real evolution heard in the music and composition of the album which makes it such a powerful and lasting work.

Though the band don’t move outside the metal oeuvre, Ænima is notable for adding new layers to the, well, toolbox, and begins Tool’s evolution from post-grunge metalheads to prog geniuses. While hints of their eventual direction exist in both Opiate and Undertow, Ænima finds the group flexing their talents for the first time, crafting incredibly layered and complex compositions that demand attention and study a quarter century after their release.

Songs like “Eulogy” and “Pushit” establish Tool’s penchant for the near tantric build and release structure that would eventually come to define the band. With bizarre time signatures and a ferocity of attack, Tool (along with Bottrill) created a truly timeless record that still, somehow, exists firmly of the milieu of late-90’s rock.

But unlike so many bands that hit the scene at the same time, Tool manage to synthesize the era’s trademark sounds (distortion, pounding rhythms, angst) into something so rare in the music world: originality. There’s no denying that Tool have a distinct feel and sonic fingerprint that is undeniably their own. At a time when they could have leaned on (and into) the relative success of “Sober,” which got considerable play on rock radio and MTV, Tool chose, instead, to use that as a foundation upon which they would build.

These days, Tool holds a special position in the pantheon of rock and metal as one of the few remaining 90s bands of particular relevance to the wider scene. Their last album, 2019’s Fear Inoculum, was enough to dethrone the likes of Taylor Swift, snatching number one spots in sales and streams. While the band has jokingly moved into the inauspicious category of “dad rock” (of note, I write these sentences here after spending a half hour greeting my children and welcoming them home from school) they still have the power to draw in new fans and sell out arena tours on a regular basis.

Much of their continued success stems not just from the meteoric success of Ænima as an album and work of art, but on also from their continued efforts at staying true to the themes they so exhaustively explored there. Evolution must be a constant. There is no time to not change. Tool, like those artists and philosophers and athletes and scientists exalted in the liner notes of their seminal work, constantly strive to push thresholds and cross boundaries. They’re constantly on a mission to evolve.