Lateralus booklet

Lateralus has some of the most amazing and original album cover art I’ve seen. You can flip through the booklet, and dig through all the layers of the human body. From the muscles right through to the bones and organs. (Those with a keen eye may have also found a particular deity hidden within the layers.) So you can flip through all the layers, but there is no skin. Why is there no skin? Why include all these layers, and not have a skin layer? Or is there a skin layer? The black slip case that the cd comes wrapped in. What’s that for?

The black slip case is the skin. You can’t dig through all the inner layers until you remove the skin. Some people listen to music only on a skin deep level. They look for nothing more than entertainment in music. Others go a little deeper. They try and find the structure of the music, find what is made of and how it works. They try and find the bones and muscles of the music. You have to dig past the skin layer of music the get to the muscles and bones. Just the same way you have to remove the slip case of Lateralus to get to the booklet.

Why is the slip case black, and the booklet so colourful? Tool have a rather dark exterior. People who know almost nothing of the band, or have never gotten past the skin layer, would call tool angry, dark, negative music. People who have only listened to Laterlus on a skin deep level often think of it as a very dark album. The slip case is black because the album appears dark on the outside, but once you remove the skin layer you can see all the brightly colored layers underneath. You can see that Laterlus is one of the most positive albums out there. And has some of the most complex bones and muscles around…