Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:

#27 Cannibal Ox, THE COLD VEIN

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vs.

#38 Tool, LATERALUS

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To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [[email protected]] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.

We have four Designated Cheerleaders today, two for each album! First up, for THE COLD VEIN, it’s @padrock.bsky.social. Take it away, PadRock!

Let's settle one issue with Cannibal Ox's "The Cold Vein." Vast Aire and Vordul Mega, the groups two MCs, are...fine. Great at times! Clunky at others. A solid B effort. But that's not what makes The Cold Vein great. Because this is not their album. It's El-Ps.

El-P, or El Producto, is a New York hip hop producer and MC, known these days for his work with Killer Mike in the breakout phenomenon Run the Jewels. Back in 2001 he was an MC coming off the underground success of his group Company Flow and hungry to start his own label. That label, Definitive Jux, would go on to release albums by underground hip hop titans like Aesop Rock, Mr. Lif, Del The Funky Homosapien, and RJD2. But the label's debut would be El-P's first attempt at fully producing an album: The Cold Vein.

The hip hop world is full of brilliant producers but it's rare that one can release a full sonic vision, a statement of purpose for their philosophy of the genre. Dr. Dre probably has the most famous example with his infectious G Funk sound on "The Chronic." Others include Q-Tip's sounds on "The Low End Theory," the RZA's "Enter the Wu-Tang," Dan the Automator on "Deltron 3030," Madlib on "Madvilainy," Pharrell on "Hell Hath No Fury," and The Alchemist on "Albert Einstein." (please feel free to quibble with my examples)

These albums all have phenomenal rapping, but at their core is the producer forging their singular vision into sound. And that is exactly what El-P does on "The Cold Vein."

No one sounds like El-P. He brings a gritty, dangerous New York sound to his beats but blends in elements from industrial (Trent Reznor would go on to collaborate with him) and trip-hop. If he has any clear predecessor it would be the RZA. They both mince their beats with harsh transitions and lean into sonic turbulence. But while RZA draws inspiration from comic books and martial arts films El-P is soaked in the paranoid sci-fi aesthetic of writers like Phillip K. Dick. His tracks pulse like unending klaxons on a dead space station, broken up by crashing machinery.

"The Cold Vein" is El-P at his best. While he has other brilliant albums--his first solo album "Fantastic Damage" is amazing and you can take your pick from the four RTJ albums--nothing blends his suffocating worldview together like this. Tracks come together like paintings as nebulous, dreamlike beats pulse behind samples of blaring guitars and horns sliced razor-thin.

This is the landscape that allows Vast Aire and Vordul Mega to thrive, drawing energy from the soundscape to feed their individual styles. El-P mixes their vocals to fit each track's vibe. Take the first (and best, imo) track "Iron Galaxy." Mega has a booming cadence but El-P muffles him slightly, making him sound like a fading transmission with dire warnings that will never reach a receiver. Contrast that with Vast Aire's snarling, incisive bars coming through crystal-clear. He's the man there with you in the shuttle, laughing because you don't realize you're all already dead.

As the album moves forward the narrative themes shift and fellow underground rappers drop in for guest verses. This is most effective when C-Rayz Walz drops in for "Battle for Asgard," bringing a vibrancy that the rest of the album keeps (deliberately) elusive.

"The Cold Vein" is important because it's a producer slamming his fist down onto the world of hip-hop and making his voice heard. Nothing ever sounded like this and honestly nothing has sounded like it since. Even in his solo work El-P never had the raw material of Vast Aire and Vordul Mega to complement the sounds he created. Killer Mike has been a great collaborator and allowed him to expand but nothing in those albums approaches the gorgeous terror here.

Not everyone bought "The Cold Vein." But everyone who did knew they'd never make it back to Earth alive.

Thank you, PadRock!

Then, also for THE COLD VEIN, it’s @strangedisciple.bsky.social. Take it away, strangedisciple!

Cannibal Ox, THE COLD VEIN is my favorite album in the 2001 tournament, and probably in my top ten all time for hip hop. If you're new to this masterpiece, welcome; I think it will be easy to convince you to give this album a fair shake. Cannibal Ox was a NYC trio: producer and future hip hop royalty El-P with emcees Vast Aire and Vordul Mega. It's got everything you're looking for: dope beats, fire rhymes, droning synths, samples from what was once your mom's favorite movie; and oh you're looking for Norse mythology? You bet your Asgard it's here too.

If you only have time for ONE (1) song:

I get it. This album is long, you are busy and patience is thin. I see you. You are doing your best. I recommend you start with the penultimate track on the album, “Pigeon” (track 14). This song demonstrates the essence, the excellence, the powerful simplicity of what Cannibal Ox does on this album: El-P’s snare-punctuated Lynchian synth drone is so ragged and jagged at times is sounds as though Vast and Vordul are rhyming perpendicular to the beat; no hooks, just one epic verse from Vast, one of the best instrumental breaks you will hear in this tournament, followed by an even more epic verse from Vordul. A worthy investment of six minutes of your one life.

Am I hearing reports you now have the time for a second brilliant song?

Lovely news. Well maybe that was the wrong choice of words; I didn’t mean love like "love" ya know. If you're telling me you really only have the bandwidth to listen to one more song off this album right now, then I need you to become acquainted with “The F-Word” (track 8). The earliest song I knew that's about the Friendzone. Wikipedia says a 1994 Friends tv episode is the first mass media use of the term friend zone. I didn't watch Friends and the term didn't really become part of the cultural lexicon in my circles until the mid-Naughties, so this 2001 track still strikes me as a very early and astute analysis of a universal dynamic in the world of social coupling. Over smooth synths the cymbal crashes and the repetitive bleeps and bloops grab my lonely soul core, providing a beat to match the energy of the friend zone epiphany- that sudden growing feeling of dread deep in your gut, reverberating up your spine. Ick! Anyway fire beat, fire lyrics, and don't front like you haven't been f-zoned before. But the most beautiful part of this song is the irony. The irony may be that Vast and Vordul are the perfect pair artistically speaking. Vast's vulnerability is in full force in the verses while Vordul comes in with the hook as part loving friend who can empathize and part mature therapist explaining a confusing new situation to a young person; that's a loving complement. Another perfect song.

Delivering rap vocals for the new millennium

We're from Harlem marching in atomic garments

Bombing all the nonsense

THE COLD VEIN deserves your attention because it's unlike any other hip hop in this tournament: not gangsta rap; not full of lyrics about winning the game of capitalism; definitely not feel good party rap. It's dark, it's raw, and it's entirely unconcerned with fitting in with the genre conventions of its day. The album opener "Iron Galaxy" sets the mood perfectly. Vast Aire and Vordul Mega describe their vision of New York over a beat composed of El-P's watery bassline juxtaposed with some of the crispest hi hats ever recorded to tape courtesy of a classic Honey Drippers sample. You are being taken on a dark city adventure but it also feels like this urban landscape is set in outer space. It’s a solid vibe for an album, and it is consistently maintained.

The sample's the flesh and the beat's the skeleton

Let's talk about El Producto, The Producer, the one and only El-P. Producer, rapper, founder of an iconic record label (Definitive Jux), one half of Run The Jewels, it's no stretch to call this guy hip hop royalty. Futuristic grime is the phrase I've used for decades to describe the sound of THE COLD VEIN. My most recent re-listen validates my belief that El-P's production here sounds just as timeless today as it did 25 years ago. Boom bap drums + decaying signal noise + deranged samples may seem like strange bedfellows but I think it works; I think this cleared the path for future generations of producers. The instrumental version of the album is an extremely enjoyable listen too, I'll provide a link on Bsky. His early production work is in stark contrast to the Timbalands or Puffys that dominated Top 40 hip hop in the y2k era. If you are liking this production, also check out El-P’s work around the same time on Company Flow, FUNCRUSHER PLUS (1997) and his solo debut FANTASTIC DAMAGE (2002).

Flows often bananas, off the nut crunches

Can Ox emcees Vast Aire and Vordul Mega bring the heat, sustaining inventive abstract imagery and key metaphors throughout the entire album. Not much traditional hip hop braggadocio, just confident demonstrations of their lyrical dexterity. A favorite example of this is how Vast Aire not only once but twice corrects himself mid-verse seamlessly (he does this on “Raspberry Fields” and “Scream Phoenix”). Those little deliberate mistakes that are so subtle you may not catch them on your first few listens, those are the signs not of a run of the mill artist but of a master of the medium.

Def Jux don't care about your culture or creed

THE COLD VEIN has something for everyone. Are you a fan of dark stuff? It doesn’t get much darker than this. Electronic music? El-P has certainly done his homework. Pitched down Jeff Goldblum and Kermit the Frog samples? You are all welcome here. This album is a giant killer.

There's two things in life: fact and belief

Yeah, and you best to believe, it's a fact I just rolled the leaf

Thanks for reading. Thanks for writing your DCs too. I find them one of the best parts of the tournament. I don’t often get to read pieces of low stakes writing by strangers about a topic they are passionate about. If you wrote one in the past few tournaments, I have likely read and enjoyed it. You rock. Thank you.

Thank you, strangedisciple!

Now we have two DCs for LATERALUS. First up, it’s @putnam39.bsky.social. Take it away, Jon!

In lieu of the difficulty of getting anyone on one side of the hump with regard to Lateralus over that hump, I would like at least to dispel this reductive notion that the album is faux highbrow male aggression. It certainly sounds aggressive and may very well be aggressive in the insistence of its message, even if the message itself isn’t. When I think of male angst or male aggression, I think of the walled off, emotionally stunted guy who finally boils over in an inappropriate and oversized manner, usually at a trivial matter as a tipping point to the accumulated repression of frustration or anger that was never addressed or had accountability taken.

At first blush, Lateralus feels like it belongs in that same bucket as, say, Slipknot or, reaching out along those perimeters, Marilyn Manson, Korn, or even Limp Bizkit.  “The Grudge” just by its title, let alone with its demand of, “wear your grudge like a crown” and Maynard’s nearly minute long bellow as it careens toward its coda, seems a more refined cousin to “People=Shit” or “Break Stuff.”  However, the song is laden with not simply anger, but regret 

and recognition that anger and frustration isn’t the endgame but can be a means to a more fruitful end.  

I often scoff at astrology like many folks, and I won’t say I believe in what Maynard may be conveying here from a cosmic standpoint (link: https://www.samanthahammerastrology.com/post/the-grudge-by-tool-saturnian-symbolism), but the symbolism of Saturn’s astrological journey and our personal impetus of maturing as we move through life’s stages is cogent.  Furthermore, one could even apply it to society as a whole as we continue ride an hellacious carousel of violence and destruction that we seem to never learn from in order to get off and move on.

Lead single “Schism” also ends in Maynard snarling the refrain “I know the pieces fit” through clenched teeth over a bruising rhythm section.  Yet, its portrayal of a breakdown of interpersonal relationships (supposedly Tool themselves), admission of the desire to finger point, and its call instead to “grow” to avoid crumbling and “rediscover communication” is decidedly contrary to the scapegoating and emotional immaturity seen in conventional “man angst.”

So all this sounds fussy still.  Yeah, probably; I personally enjoy ambitious ideas musically and lyrically, even if they fall flat - that’s the prog in me, and in Tool.  Even across nearly 80 minutes, I find little falls flat here at all. Maynard’s exploration of our existence physically and its relation to our existence mentally or spiritually is a topic well worn across centuries in a variety of art forms, not to mention the basis of many an Eastern religion.  Accordingly, Lateralus is hardly esoteric or willfully highfalutin.  

The album title’s dual reference of lateral thinking - seeking answers off the beaten path, perhaps adjacent to, but not the norm - and the vastus lateralis - our largest quadriceps muscle and chief instrument in what propels us physically forward - becomes increasingly relevant as our world in 2026 spirals further down in its rut of unfocused chaos

Thank you, Jon!

Last but certainly not least, for LATERALUS it’s @bikemogacz.bsky.social. Take it away, Mike!

Tool's greatest success tends to come when they occupy a very specific point on the irony-sincerity spectrum. One of their most well-known songs is a jeremiad against desensitization that is nonetheless called "Stinkfist." The funkiest tune in their entire oeuvre is quite literally and graphically about cyclical abuse. Little interstitials dot the landscape of most of their albums, which range from carnival music to the most terrifying-sounding cookie recipe you've ever heard. And their musical high point (in my estimation) is a song about the responsibility Maynard/the band feels towards the creative process, in which the surrogate for this message is a bed-shitting maniac.

So then what to make of their most consistently serious album, LATERALUS? A lazy analysis could say this is where the band "grew up" and call it a day, but there are a few problems with that. Most obviously, the band was never purely puerile beforehand and never lost their self-effacing nature afterwards. This leaves us with no obvious growth pattern, linear or otherwise, to map LATERALUS on to. But more incisively, it's not difficult to see through the surface-level changes from the AENIMA era to discover that LATERALUS is really just a slightly different flavor of what came before. Take the most bile-filled track, Ticks and Leeches. While somewhat sparser in its composition than the similar track from AENIMA (Hooker With a Penis), it's just as punishing at its heights and the theme is roughly the same. Except that the lightly-veiled self-loathing misplaced onto a stereotypical fan is replaced by purposeful, righteous anger at the record companies that have delayed and otherwise prevented Tool from releasing their music as they would like. This pointed focus is reinforced in the bridge sections where the mumbled Portuguese swear words of the former song are replaced by formless, guttural shrieks of anger. The irony is dropped, but only in a moment when there's little to be ironic about. I suppose you could call this "growing up" if you really wanted, but I think it's much more accurate to think of this as "sharpening your sword" when the moment calls for it.

Expanding this outward, I think that this approach allows LATERALUS to be the most cohesive demonstration of the central ethos of Tool: a sort of meathead's idea of spirituality and ethics (before that sort of thing became a possible cause for suspicion). Indeed it's easy to summarize a lot of these songs as basic categorical imperatives: don't hold grudges, patience is a virtue, be open to new experiences, etc etc. Because this ethos is most clearly and explicitly communicated on this album, irony is not so much rejected as it is deemed not necessary for this project. Reading LATERALUS like this then doesn't mean that Tool had changed; it just meant that for a moment in time it made sense for their artistic goals to, momentarily, get a little bit more serious.

A fun final note: When I first listened to this album, my most advanced music listening device was a battery-powered boombox. Because such a device needs to conserve energy whenever possible, it automatically shut off at the completion of an album. So when the Art Bell call about aliens that makes up the concluding Faaip de Oiad gets cut off, so did my boombox. Truly one of those little mixtures of time and place and record that stands out in my music-listening memories.

Thank you, Mike!

Click here to see the current results for the entire tournament, and click here to see the current results for the prediction bracket contest.

Yesterday, #6 Radiohead, AMNESIAC defeated #70 Destiny's Child, SURVIVOR, 154-75-1.

Thanks,

Kent