Tool - Ænema

when this came out when I was 14, at the time i was super into hardcore and punk, so much that I generally ignored everything else. Which is what i did with this record, I had heard some of the songs on the radio, and I wasn't anti-tool, but I noticed that tool had very passionate fans, dudes who would wear tool shirts everyday, talk about tool always, only listen to tool. At the time tool dudes were off putting, I just couldn't get my head around it. This changed in about 1997-1998 when I became friends with my friend Nick, who was totally into it and since I was hanging out with him all the time, I heard tool like every fucking day, at first I was like "lets listen to something else" but after a while this album really grew on me. It was heavier then most things going on in the radio rock world, which i enjoyed. The thing that really drew me in was the melodic vocals and super clean bass sound, the almost hypnotic riffs and it was heavy as bricks at times, another thing I liked was that no other band sounds like tool and the ones who try fail very hard. Listening to this now I think I enjoy even more then i did then, songs about wanting the apocalypse to happen are favorites of mine, and they did that before I was even thinking about it.The recording is outstanding, everything sounds clean and heavy and they're one of the few bands that actually sounds like getting high to me, which is really hard to do (thin lizzy, raging slabs-the dealer lp, and the mars volta do it well though). Ultimately though this record was really good, and I listen to it still, which is a lot to say for a album that's 14 years old. If you haven't heard it, get it and if you have heard you probably like it.