TOOL’s new song spirals the universe

– Posted on October 15, 2019Posted in: Entertainment, Uncategorized, Web Exclusives

Music album

tool lateralus

By Miranda O’Berry

Reporter

 

The band TOOL has quite the reputation for creating intriguing, meaningful tracks, but they have outdone themselves on their hit song “Lateralus”. From its mystical beat to layered lyrics, “Lateralus” is the greatest indie rock piece of its time. By complete accident, the band created a song that plays “on the spiral” of the universe.

The beat is the first thing people notice is different. As it turns out, when the song was written, TOOL wrote the beat to be in perfect rhythm with the unvisited Fibonacci sequence. The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers made up by adding the two previous numbers together: 0, 1,1,2,3,5,8,13, and so on. The Fibonacci sequence shares the same ratio as Phi, otherwise known as the Golden Ratio or Golden Mean.

The Golden Ratio is found all across our everyday, from the painting of the Last Supper to flowers and seashells. In number form, the ratio is 1.618; in a drawing, it’s a set of boxes. When the Fibonacci numbers are placed in the box, it creates a perfect spiral — the spiral of the universe. Lateralus has a beat with a tune that matches the curve of this spiral.

While TOOL could have stopped at that level of mind-blowing, they weren’t quite finished with their masterpiece. They started Lateralus in a 9/8 time, continuing to 8/8 and finally 7/8 towards the end. 987 is the 16th number in the Fibonacci sequence.

Stepping away from the beautifully haunting tune, the lyrics are something to sit and ponder for hours. The song starts by talking about colors shifting; black, white, red, and yellow  “reaching out to me”. The vocalist Maynard James Keenan chose these colors from seeing them repeatedly in ancient North American folk art about creation. Keenan also reiterates to “swing on the spiral,” and Golden Spiralthat he’s “reaching for the random,” among more vague but thought-inducing lyrics.

Minutes of intense drums, varying beat, and mystical lyrics about the spiral of the universe along with TOOL’s patented artwork clash to make TOOL’s “Lateralus” a mixed metal masterpiece, hidden in the shadows by TOOL and TOOL fans for years.