all lyrics from all Tool and APC albums can be derived from one single story line...

The Devil in Los Angeles?

I’ve noticed of course that Tool lyrics from different albums have a lot of common themes. These themes include spirituality, pain, retribution, death, insanity, jilted love, drugs, and the afterlife. A Perfect Circle lyrics also focus heavily on these. I’ve wondered if there is one story that all the lyrics are derived from. When ‘10,000 Days’ came out, I finally found a potential common thread. Here is what I’ve come up with so far. The story has three main characters: the narrator (who is sometimes God-like), the protagonist, and the antagonist. The songs are either sung by the narrator or by the protagonist. I believe the protagonist is the messiah. The antagonist and protagonist it seems were at one time lovers, but are now locked in a bitter duel (Schism, Bottom). In fleshing out this story, I’ve let the title tracks ’10,000 Days’, ‘Lateralus’, ‘Aenema’, ‘Undertow’, and ‘Opiate’ have the greatest influence. I’ve also consulted album cover art as source material. Finally, I’ve kept in mind that a lot of the lyrics have more than one meaning, or hidden meanings.

I think the story is about the messiah being born as a human and ultimately judging that some souls must be sent to hell. I like this idea, because as it explains how an infinitely loving and just God could allow souls to suffer in hell. In the dark lyrics of tool we have an answer.

Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Mayan Prophecy, Ritual Magic, and even drug use are ‘religions’ that are mentioned, so the story is a blending of these. The messiah is alluded to by the songs 10,000 Days, Schism, Eulogy, and Rosetta Stoned. It is the song 10,000 Days which made me curious, because it seems the messiah is dying or otherwise returning to heaven from Earth at the age of 27 or so, and it seems like he’s pissed.

Virginity

I’m assuming the messiah is born as a human and is completely unbiased in regards to the tasks ahead of him- battling the devil and judging souls. Thus in order to remain impartial he would not know he was the messiah… as that knowledge would certainly bias him. As an incarnation of God, he would be an extremely kind, innocent, and loving person. Naturally, he would be taken advantage of and abused mercilessly in today’s world (the only mentions of locations are Ohio and LA, so the tale takes place in the U.S.).

The loss of virginity is an event of paramount importance and seems to set off a lot of events. The messiah is so moved by the beauty of his lover that he loses himself and all control (Magdalena). They glow as they make love. Yet later on the messiah has no recollection of this encounter (Prison Sex, Jimmy). The lover leaves him (Crawl Away) even though he tried to cure her (Sleeping Beauty) and he begins to experience tremendous suffering (Bottom).
The lover and he used to be on the same side (Schism), but now the lover is the focus of an intense grudge (The Grudge). Despite this they are still somehow parts of each other (Part of Me). The Grudge mentions infidelity (talk of the ‘scarlet letter’), so at some point the lover cheated on the protagonist. Moreover, there appears to have been multiple partners and a time during which the lover forgets completely about the messiah (3 Libras).

I assume some catastrophic event would have to happen in order for the infinitely loving messiah to choose to send even one person to hell. I’ve therefore assumed the worst, so to speak, in my interpretation of the story. I believe the messiah and lover really hit it off at first. The lover then abused the messiah during his first sexual encounter and he blocks it out of memory while she went to sleep. The messiah left part of him in her, energy or sexual energy for example, but it is released by someone else and makes her unnaturally high and out of her head (The Pot). Presumably the lover could not release the energy himself because of the abuse and poison she gives him (Bottom). One reading of Lateralus goes “black then white are all I see… anger and jealousy then came to be”. In Magdalena too the lover goes from being white to black. So the lover cheated on the messiah with one or more black males? It is this event that explodes his third eye and crown chakras (cover of Aenima) and drives him insane when he 'overthinks and overanalyzes' while missing crucial memories from his past (Lateralus). The event also cheapens the lover to the value of a dollar (Magdalena) and her vagina becomes ravenous and unsatisfiable (The Hollow).

He suffers through unimaginable pain, including the pain of watching this loved one becoming a fallen angel (3 Libras). He goes from being successful and happy to being nameless, shameless, nothing, no one, and dead inside. He crawls around in confusion for years, during which time he literally drowns in pain (The Grudge and Undertow) and her ‘shit adds up’ (Bottom). He puts forth a messianistic effort just to stay alive (The Patient). There is a period of drug use (mainly DXM and LSD) as means to spiritual awakening (Third Eye, sounds like 'Rite-Aid opened my third eye', where Rite-Aid is a good play to get DXM in California) and a time when he realizes he is fearless and naked after such a difficult fight to survive. The messiah is reconstituting himself and getting ready for revenge and a final battle ("with my feet upon the ground" and “ride the spiral to the end” - Lateralus, noting that the Buddhist messiah is depicted with 'both feet on the ground'). Also, there is one final warning and invitation from the messiah to the lover (Lateralus, Opiate) but apparently he is ignored.

Using knowledge of physics and mysticism, I was also able to explain the ‘black hole’ phenomenon that some dxm/lsd users experience while listening to Tool music. Just as‘E = mc^2’ implies matter and energy are equivalent, the implication is that matter, energy, and consciousness are all three equivalent. The messiah’s pain, the grudge, is so great that it turns into a black hole. So the messiah will turn the tables and use the poison and all the shit she gave him against her (Bottom). Apparently this black hole is hell, and all the evil of the world will be washed away into it (Aenema). Thus the only solution to his pain is to erase the supposed lover.
The center of the blackhole appears to be the greatest concentration of evil in the world- the US. The center is in the evilest city- L.A.

And the exact center lies in the lover, the antagonist, apparently the devil, who is the evilest person in the world. And the exact center of the black hole is specifically in her vagina (The Hollow). It is because of the hollow that the messiah experienced so much pain, creating a black hole that will suck all the world’s evil into it. Hell.

So in the end, the messiah never actually had to make a choice of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. It all happened accidentally. Evil people will be sucked into the black hole basically through gravity. Good people will be sucked into a 'good black hole' (Gravity). And he didn’t have to fight the devil, he just had to survive. But in answer to the original question: How could an infinitely loving God send a person's soul to hell? The Answer: if that person sexually abuses the messiah from the moment he lost his virginity, then cheats on him by being in a gang-bang, thus driving him insane and causing the world to end... then that person is going to hell. Irreversibly.

This is a dark story, but so are the lyrics. It comes together like a puzzle. Is she responsible for the catastrophe prophecied by the Mayans that will end mankind? If the story is true, then yes. What's cool is that every song in the Tool and APC catalogues can be interpreted within the context of this story. Mood and tone all match up in every single song. (although I don't understand the red car and crime scene in Disgustipated)

And now I come to a final point. If the story is true, then the devil is actually on Earth and can be found, perhaps via clues. I'm looking into this sort of kind of now. And the end times will be soon... Mayan prophecy points to 2012 as the end of the world. (Mayans believed that time was a spiral, not quite like increasingly large concentric circles, but more like a repeated loop drawn out again and again over time, like a Slinky. The center of this loop and cause for the repetition apparently is some catastrophic event that causes the end of humanity)

I also like to imagine that the messiah is real and on the Earth. I picture him though locked away in a mental institution and heavily medicated... for claiming to be the messiah. I imagine a messiah who feels he is the messiah yet cannot prove it, and is irked by all the people who insist he is just crazy. That kind of exasperation could really shake a messiah's belief in his fellow man. The only person who 'believes' him is Maynard, who wrote all this music seemingly for him specifically. I think that's the coolest part of this entire story. It's like, just in case it's true and there is a messiah who needs help, Maynard offers support in the form of a beautifully told story.

Can it be true? I know the pieces fit. But don't take my word for it. Listen to the music, and watch the weather change!

-Windward Clemons

It was bad enough already, but when I got to the last few sentences, I realized you couldn't be serious.

There are so many random parts for this...it reminds me of when people make a story like, "I had a Grudge against this girl so when I tried to make her Bottom a Part of Me she told me to Jerk Off so I went and smoked some Pot and got so Rosetta Stoned that my Third Eye opened up so I talked to my friend Jimmy and asked about Prison Sex but he told me I was a loser and that girl was after Maynard's Dick anyway."

Your story is great and shows a ton of imagination...but it doesn't really seem to have any proof or basis other than you made stuff up. The fact that the entire storyline skips back and forth across 15 years of music in random order doesn't help either.

it was a little too reductive for me... despite the length

listen to the audio commentary for the perfect circle dvd Amotion...
I dont think its that complex... I think Maynard comes up with words
from real life situations (the man in recovery talking about the halo
becoming a noose)... and then he tries it out on guitar riffs that Adam,
Justin, or Howerdel come up with.

IMO, theres no riitual, or mysticism, puzzles, or stringed together themes....

Just GOOD SONG WRITING. I could be wrong..... who knows.

That quote has a perminant place in my heart, forever. lol

I'd say the three!-- (narrator, protagonist and antagonist) are just extensions of maynards self; he's able to distinguish between them so clearly that he can write songs about them. Think of puscifer and the songs Rev 22:20 and The Undertaker ... that's the antagonist,.. his antagonist. Naturally we'd be able to identify with all of these aspects. But yes good song writing for sure.

Interesting take on it. Look at puscifer.com -- you talking abot the black hole in her vagina reminded me of the "madam puscifer"; when you click that top banner. I like your interpretation and integration of all the music alot!

<3

I was intruiged and wanted to read more and more. But then when you started talking about a black hole vagina i got scared and didnt want to read anymore. I think its awesome that you can make enough sense of everything to integrate so much together. That in itself is pretty great.

But i dont think we are supposed to work out what it all means. Half of the satisfaction in listening to Tool (for me anyway), is that i will never be satisfied. There is always the unknown, and as with life, that is what makes it interesting.

Um...how do you spell Freud/Fruedian????

Well, hey! This was fun, but you might as well write a book next time! ...just sight TOOL as insperation cuz, this one's all yours man.

Now, I don't want to JUST flame, though, to think this is TOOL & APCs "grand storyline" is just a redundant mistake.

Again, it's great (shrugs) that you can find correlation in music and life. But, there are MANY explanations, here in this site as a matter of fact, of how your theme (or any 1 peice of it) is constantly preyed upon by the multimedia at large. It just sells.

Take some time to search around. I think you'll find the bands' music, even deeper than you ever imagined, as, YOUR "story" is pretty shallow and specific.

PS "shallow" is harsh, but I mean it by definition only. Had fun though, really! Think BOOK! Books sell too. I'd buy it (in paperback).

Peace.

it really works better if you listen to the music with the story in mind...
The Hollow is a good place to start

"Rite-Aid opened my Third Eye"

Are you serious about that? Actually forget it, I don't even want to know, it's too damn funny.

I will be smiling all day because of this. What's wrong with you people?

it really works better if you listen to the music with the story in mind...
the studio version of Third-eye is a good place to start
the aenima album cover lists dxm dose levels in mg/kg and effects.
why is this so questionable?

Because you're creating a story line out of random things from random albums that go in a random order. You are just using random words, phrases, and concepts from Maynard's musical past to weave a story. If that's how you interpret it, great, but be prepared to answer questions about it (being that it's so far fetched and, um, strange) and don't get perplexed that people aren't hailing you as a genius immediately.

there are plenty of things to connect the albums together, but that parody-bash t'wards you was kinda accurate in credibility. it's just not that simple. if it were, we'd all know something by now.

Most of it can be traced straight back to Jung.

In addition, you have to think that they first started 14 years ago...that is a long time to keep one single story going. The authors of a series of stories often write their first story having some idea of how they are going to write the next and also how the story is going to end (im going to say eg harry potter cos its the first thing coming to mind). One specific thing thtat i can think of to disprove your theories are the tracks concerning Maynard's mother. With opiate in 92, i am sure he did not have wings in mind for some time in the then-distant future.

Also, the links you have found could simply be brought down to the fact that Maynard feels a certain way about certain things and therefore incorporates this into his music. We can therefore expect recurring themes throughout the albums.

i definitely feel like this all started even before tool started to kick our asses. at least fourteen years.

I'd say that is true about the new album, but I do believe that Lateralus had one main underlying concept.

the way it works is to listen to the songs I note, paying attention to lyrics and mood.
try doing that first.

I admit, if you sit on a high horse, sucking a lollipop, and dismiss without hesitation any idea that you don't like, then I agree, it won't make much sense to you.

Jesus Christ

i think you're gonna hafta draw it out even more, make 'em wanna get into the level that you're at. the hollow, start from there... i might even help somewhere along the way.

And I'll admit that if you just lay back and take everything at face value without thinking much past the surface, your story kicks ass.

However, if you think about it for two seconds, it makes zero sense. And you have done nothing, past your initial post, to actually clarify. Should I recap your posts?

your first post after the main one:

second post, you repeated the same exact thing but switched out a song name. you offered a teaspoon of hope with that Ænima thing, but this is where you start wondering why no one can accept your awesome theory without question:

and then your third post (the one I am replying to) where you just say "it won't make sense if you dismiss it."

So are you telling us to blindly follow and just accept? People have been asking, critiquing, and not getting anything out of you. Are you having fun with this joke? Because I think you're the only one laughing.

How does this story make sense? How did you get any clues to put the pieces together besides just listening to the song and putting an arbitrary storyline to it? Did you ever think, for maybe one second, that Maynard writes stuff about his life and that maybe, just maybe, his lyrics are an indication of his own life? Of course you could make a story about it! His content is largely autobiographical (especially APC stuff, which he has explained plenty of times). There's no mystery that it's about someone's life, it's poetry about someone's life! But you're just taking everything written and literally inventing something with no proof.

Where did you get the idea for this story? Your ass? Show us something that proves that there is actually a logical connection to this story. Otherwise we're going to have a vote between my completely made up story and your completely made up story, and I bet you more people like mine.

the way it works is to listen to the songs I note, paying attention to lyrics and mood.
try doing that first.

if you have a single, specific question, I will answer it comprehensively.

what are you on?

I'm high on life

You're chasing ghosts. When I was really baked I thought Wings for Marie and 10,000 Days could easily apply to the Virgin Mary(ie?) and Christianity as a whole. It kinda works, but that's just what's great about Tool songs. They allow for so many different interpretations. Something for everybody.

You've taken a huge body of work and implied/applied your own fundamental ideas and belief systems to it. Learn about yourself by analysing your results with that in mind.

Sorry I don't have a single specific question, I have a bunch of them. I asked them in my previous post.

But since you obviously don't give a shit, I'm just going to give up. You have your thoughts, I have mine, and obviously you don't feel like actually sharing yours. So whatever.

okay here's an example of my interpretation of a lyric.
"push the envelope. watch it bend" from lateralus:

on the jacket to aenema, there is a mention of ritual magik, and how any time a single person pushes themselves to the limit, the whole race evolves. I think the messiah is pushing the limits of how much pain a person can take. he can't lose because evil would win. so he keeps with it. he pushes the envelope, bends it, and will soon break it. according to ritual magik, then the race would undergo punctuated evolution. the whole species would evolve into a new species... just like as is described by 46+2, which is the normal number of human chromosomes plus two new 'spiritual chromosomes' that are activated and needed for humans to survive. i.e., we can only survive if we become more spiritual, and then that spirituality is passed onto other generations.

just as a note, the fibonnaci sequence is a cornerstone of lateralus. the mathematical generating function for the fibonnaci sequences uses the golden ratio, which in turn is used to draw the spiral of a nautilus shell. there's that spiral talk again.

that's why I love tool so much. I'm pretty sure maynard knew this stuff too and this is how he intended it.

nautilus is fib, not golden mean. (...with a hint of archemedes, too)

aren't the golden mean and fib spirals two different things entirely? ie one is emotional the other is logical?

hushypushy ur storyline for the songs is flawless

I think I'm used to academic standards, and assumed other readers would be too. In academics, if an author makes a claim they often cite at the end of the sentence the source on which the claim is based.

For instance.

The girl's vagina became ravenous and unsatisfiable (The Hollow).

This means that the lyrics for the song 'The Hollow' mentions a girl's vagina being ravenous.

Another hypothetical example:

The girl is a slut (Magdalena).

Magdalena is actually the Whore of Babylon, which would indeed make her pretty slutty.

example: ... even though he tried to cure her (Sleeping Beauty)

now, a quick check of the lyrics of Sleeping Beauty indeed shows that the author tried to cure the sleeping beauty in the song. is this far-fetched and mysterious? is this notion the product of my twisted mind? no. the exact lyrics go something like 'I believe I can cure it all for you, dear'

did he ever say in The Hollow "There is a ravenous vagina". This part alone disturbs me immensly.

RE: the Fibonacci sequence and golen mean/ratio

As the numbers in the Fibonacci sequence get larger, the ratio of one number to its neighbouring number is close to 1:1.618 which is the golden ratio. I read some interesting thing in a book "The Mystery of Numbers", that a sunflower has 8 spirals going clockwise and 13 anticlockwise (or the other way around, cant recall). They are consecutive numbers in the Seqence and their ratio is 1:1.625. There are other examples of this, including the nautilus, here (dont know how to do link): http://www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibnat.html

So they are related. I hope this is at least somewhat what you referring to =p

The Hollow is a vagina. I thought it was clear from the lyrics

For those who can't be bothered to read it all, I have written an abridgement.



everyToollyricever.

How would edification "perminently fill this hollow", if "this hollow" is a cunt? This would be soo senseless, it ruins the whole theory.

PS. The Hollow=my broken heart. I need to curb my passion for a sec, and learn to really love once again.

I think that's the definition of far-fetched. Maynard's words are far deeper than most bands, but that doesn't mean you have over over analyaze every fucking thing. most of maynard's words come from experiences he's had and anything he feels is inspiring. I think a handful of songs are very personal to maynard. I believe Prision Sex, H, Jimmy, Pushit and obviously Wings all come from his life and he wrote those words to help himself and others. his lyrics are vague and you shouldn't take everything at face value, but you shouldn't over analyze them either. there's a middle ground.

Thanks for the chuckle :D

PS: Toolstory, in case you didnt understand my disturbed-ness - ravenous reminds me of a lion... lions have teeth.. enough said methinks =(

so if it's not exactly "obvious", then it's automatically "far-fetched"?

let's see how far that takes us...

okay how about this. maybe it's accidental, but it still works