I need to watch things die, from a good safe distance.

So, a week between posts (apart from that one earlier). Pretty slack.

This week being what it was, however, I'd expect not to make any posts. Had I been writing this blog five years ago, there'd've been no posts for about a month after May 14th. Five years ago next week, Tool's Lateralus was released and I went into hibernation: the only logical, the only conceivable course of action in response to this event. As the follow-up to the greatest, the most terrifying, the most beautiful, the most agonising and the most exhaustively cathartic record ever made - Ænima - Lateralus could only be greeted in such a manner. I listened to it compulsively for weeks, forsaking all else. I believe I've mentioned this before.

But if its release was epochal, it could never live up to Ænima in the long run. Staggering though it is, in all its fearful fury, cool rationality and boundless hope, it could never live up to Ænima. It gives me goosebumps and what certain irony-free Tool fans like to call Toolgasms every time I listen to it: Ænima makes me want to die. There will never be anything like Ænima from any band ever again, not even Tool, and the inevitable disappointment Lateralus caused me, for all its brilliance, has lowered my expectations for the new one.

A little too much, actually. I've simply been lazy and uninspired this week. I've not been sequestered somewhere absorbing each and every note numerous times on the first day. I've had it a week and I've listened to it twice.

I do like it though, I think. My friend asked me what I thought, mid-way through the first listen. I said, "I'll let you know in a couple of months." At least.