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Choices always were a problem for me: or, How I learned to stop worrying and rank every TOOL song
Alright, so in anticipation of a new TOOL album in April (omg if they release it on April 1st, I’m going to die of laughter, thus realizing my fear of dying before I get to hear the new TOOL album), LOUDWIRE decided to rank every TOOL song.
Let’s just say I have a few dozen issues with this list. First and foremost, however, is that it’s impossible to compare and rank Maynard’s Dick versus Wings for Marie. You certainly can, but it’s not a meaningful ranking in any way when you just smash all the tracks together into one pile.
Well if you can do better, why don’t you?
Spoiler: I did! But being a die-hard TOOL fan, I knew this was a fool’s errand without certain conditions. I took all the tracks from Opiate, Undertow, Ænima, Salival, Lateralus, and 10,000 Days and listed them. A few things popped out at me immediately:
- Some songs have “filler” intros that must/should be taken into account.
- Albums generally have a pretty unified progression from the powerful and shorter songs at the front and the more meandering and longer songs at the end.
- Holy shit TOOL is…
