Ænima

Original bassist Paul D'Amour left in 1995 over creative differences. Danny Carey has said D'Amour wanted to play guitar, and the band spent months auditioning before choosing Justin Chancellor of the English band Peach, who had played with Tool in Europe in 1994. Having heard a David Sylvian and Robert Fripp album he had produced, the band hired David Bottrill, who has said he knew little about them until they sent him Undertow and Opiate. The album was recorded at Ocean Way in Hollywood and The Hook in North Hollywood and mixed at Larrabee. Bottrill set up a PA behind the drums so that the electronic parts Carey played live filled the same room as the kit. The title joins anima, Latin for soul and in Jungian psychology the feminine inner self, with enema; Maynard James Keenan said in 1996 that the record was about unity, evolution and alternative perspectives. "Ænema" pictures Los Angeles washed into the ocean, drawing on Bill Hicks's "Arizona Bay" routine, and a lenticular map under the US CD's tray makes California vanish as it tilts. The album is dedicated to Hicks, who died in 1994: Kevin Willis's painting of him, captioned "Another Dead Hero", appears in the artwork, and his voice opens the closing "Third Eye". On "Die Eier Von Satan", Marko Fox barks a recipe for Mexican wedding cookies in German. The US CD came in a lenticular "Multi-Image" case whose inlays appear to move. The vinyl appeared on 17 September 1996 and the CD and cassette on 1 October. The album entered the Billboard 200 at No. 2 with 148,000 copies in its first week, behind only Nirvana's live compilation, and reached No. 1 in New Zealand. Art directors Adam Jones and Kevin Willis were nominated for the Grammy for Best Recording Package in 1997, and the title track, "Ænema", won Best Metal Performance at the 1998 ceremony. The RIAA certified the album gold in December 1996 and triple platinum on 4 March 2003, and by 2019 it was Tool's best-selling album in the US, at 3.7 million copies.