Listening to Tool has always been like an ethereal autopsy. Slowly and subtle the layers of skin, body fat and muscle peel away until the core is finally reached, gorged out and left for celestial decomposition. Jeremy Irons summed it up best in David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers: "There should be a beauty contest for people's insides..." Five years in the making, this colossal piece of brooding intensity has Tool swimming in new oceans while creating those dense layers of viciously dreamy pageantry that the band have been known for. Structurally, this thing is unbelievable; where it painlessly carves you up in the first half, until it reaches the mid-section where it ultimately strikes (the "this will hurt just a bit" part) and finally finishing you off in such a way that by the end of the album, you're floating, somewhat suspended, just like the feeling you get after listening to Farewell To Kings or Hemispheres. Tool had already taken the rulebook and drowned it with Aenima but Lateralus just takes that extra lunge into innerspace. 'Schism' is practically the most accessible song musically, along with the elusive cries of 'Parabol' while the dauntingly tearing and abrasive title track, the brutal hypnotism of 'Ticks & Leeches' and the exotic-progressive grasp of 'Reflection' seem to attack in a subdued way like a smoothly sharpened knife would glide into flesh. How much sublimity can be found within, one can only guess, but if the climax of this album, 'Faaip De Oiad', is anything, it has to be the most disturbing way to end an album, ever. Musically speaking, each instrument is its own voice: the tribal, psychedelic percussive rhythms, the progressive but deadly guitar ambience, Justin Chancellor's haunting bass vibes and, the flesh that coats the muscle: the vocal baptism of Maynard James Keenan. Of course it would be fair to mention that Tool have also once again re-defined the essence of progressive music, a merciless display of stream of consciousness, and they might as well be the new King Crimson. Never before have I heard an album that slithers as one surreal continuum, that takes a hold with such delicate measures and care, making this the most magical listening experience since Ritual De Lo Habitual. Once again rock will never be the same. Long live rock.