Tool: Every Album Ranked From Worst To Best
How do the pieces fit?
Rock icons Tool remain, to this day, one of the most enigmatic yet brilliantly progressive bands on the planet. Despite having an output level which can best be described as "at a snail's pace."
Throughout the band's twenty-five plus year history, just four full-length albums have been released, all of which hit platinum in multiple countries. Their fans are a virtual army of die-hard supporters who will consume every scrap of new material they can find from the band, though there's precious little out there. Lead singer Maynard James Keenan seems to always be busy, with "side" projects like A Perfect Circle and Puscifer as well as a vineyard and charitable causes. Yet Tool's output simply crawls along, most recently delayed by a long-simmering insurance lawsuit.
All that makes being a Tool fan a rather frustrating experience, since the majority of their body of work is absolutely stellar, yet the wait between albums increasingly tedious. With signs of a fifth release finally appearing, however, it appears that Tool may yet rise again. Which makes this a great time to examine their existing catalog, which, beyond the four LP format albums mentioned, also includes an EP and a DVD/CD hybrid with a number of live and unreleased tracks.
So lets take a look at all of Tool's albums, ranked, and see where all the pieces fit!
6. Salival
Tool's hybrid DVD/CD collection Salival was, incredibly, released over a decade and a half ago. This came shortly before the release of Tool's third studio length album in 2001, and just four years after their sophomore full length effort AEnima - making the early 2000s one of Tool's busiest periods of activity, outside of the early years.
That said, Salival is also one of their weakest releases, mostly because it's a collection meant for the hardcore fanbase, with previously released songs and new tracks all but inaccessible to casual/new listeners. The DVD (and VHS, yes VHS was still around) consisted of a number of Tool's award-winning, haunting music videos, including the early Hush (DVD only), a standout among Tool videos as it featured the band members themselves on screen. In the years before YouTube, this might have been alluring enough to fork over some hard cash, but in hindsight, it's not enough of a draw.
The CD portion did consist of unreleased material, including a brilliantly low-key rendition of Led Zepplin's No Quarter, and LAMC - Los Angeles Municipal Court, which features a parody of an auto-attendant for the court, with humorous options such as "For information in Yiddish, please press 8./For information in Ig-pay Atin-lay, lease-pay ress-pay ine-nay." That track also features the hidden song Maynard's D---. The problem is, the release is so niche, no one outside of the Tool "Army" really needs it in their collection, especially since No Quarter is the only standout among the unreleased material.