cd image

[evilentity]

Am I off my rocker for interpreting the image on the cd in a very sexual manner? To me it suggests a person sucking (or licking, as case could be...) themselves off.

Any ideas on the significance of this in conjunction with the title of the album or its themes?

Is this just a recurring image Tool uses (cf. the cow licking itself in the Undertow artwork)?

[scorpioali]

it's just a woman who is doing a yoga move. adam talked a bit about it in a triple j radio interview when aenima first came out. you can listen to it in the audio section here.

[crackhoarmojo]

Your not crazy dude, or even perverted for that matter... If you take the booklet and flip the image that displays a bunch of blurry people, whom I beleive to be the band members, on a couch and what is a blurry image of the CD art to face the front of the case (so that the whole 3D moving image thing will work) and you move it, it looks like (or is, I'm not all that sure) someone sucking him or herself off.
There's two or three other images like that in the booklet (one of the eye with two pupils<-- my personal favorite Tool picture ever, props to Cam DeLeon for that one, the one I mentioned about the couch and the contortionist, the acctual cover, and the map in the back<- which, correct me if I'm wrong, appears to be LA flooding like Maynard signs about in the title track)

[Misoanthropos]

when you go do not question your first impression, you are not utilizing you brain to the extent that it could be called "thinking"

-the images appears to be a person servicing themselves,
-the image is a woman contorting her body in a certain position

how does it tell us anything about the music or tool? and if it doesn't what good does knowing reality from seeming reality help then?

think...

"things are rarely as they seem"

I began approaching life with this phrase on my mind in my sophmore year in highschool (4 years ago). I ended up doing so for several reasons: I was heavily into tool - starts off with song titles, then possible even some lyrics, artwork, etc... I was also learning about a conspiratorial group called the Illuminati and conspiracies in general (which basically put an idea in my head - simply because we do not know something does not mean it did not or could not happen) and I learned more about my ethnic history as a Palestinian (dealing with the total lack of factual information provided to the masses about the topic).

Back to the specific topic at hand...

Now, why would a large amount of people look at that and be disgusted, disturbed, offended, or the like? Why would people immediately jump to assume it is sexual?

because we have been raised and taught to think like this...this is our subconcious mind
and since this is the way our subconcious works in this world, we should approach life as thought they "are rarely as they seem"

[volcano lance]

*high five*
Kudos to you man.

[Misoanthropos]

goddamn i made so many grammatical errors and typos...

[freedom]

the woman is contorting herself. It could be that tool is asking you to stretch your ideas. Bend your thoughts to the limits. Look at them in a new light. Never settle.

[IC]

This has been said before...The way I see it, she couldnt reach. She's just being a contortionist.

[OpiAtE_666]

I think the image is defintely someone sucking themselves off. Tool did this, if for no other reason, than to disturb people. It adds to their dark mysterious image, and hell its something you don't see everyday.

[SonOfWillieTheP]

Yeah, they've got a twisted sence of humour, like on The Gaping Lotus Experience, Maynard's Dick, LAMC, cow picture of Undertow, fake back catalogue of Aenima etc.