Undertow
TOOL\'s breakthrough moment—their double-platinum debut full-length—is best known for the pulsating alt-metal crossover hit \"Sober.\" It was released before a scene-stealing summer when they graduated from the second stage to the main stage in the middle of Lollapalooza 1993. Embraced by alternative crowds and headbangers alike, it’s an album of both sensitivity and brutality, fragility and anger, somewhere between King Crimson\'s precision and Swans\' bloodletting. Guitarist Adam Jones and bassist Paul d\'Amour lurch around in drop-D, drummer Danny Carey adds busy prog flourishes, and the voice of Maynard James Keenan dredges swamps and pierces skies. The band\'s unique mix of warmth and unease also comes from a willingness to experiment: In making the LP, the band blasted a piano with a shotgun, tickled a guitar with an Epilady hair remover, and recruited punk poet laureate Henry Rollins for a spoken-word interlude.
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Just as grunge was reaching its boiling point and radio-friendly punk-pop loomed on the horizon, Tool released Undertow, which firmly reinforced metal's prominence as a musical style -- but, for once, it had something worthwhile to say.