Nightmare Fuel / tool

*dissonant guitar noises*

Let's put it this way: tool are the fucking ExxonMobil of Nightmare Fuel.

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• "Rosetta Stoned." Has the Narrator been abducted by aliens, or is he just doing the Mushroom Samba? Either way, it's really fucking scary. Listen to it stoned.
• Here's something "fun" to do: stay up until 3 am, then turn off all the lights and listen to Lateralus all the way through. By the time you get to "Faaip de Oiad", you will be paranoid beyond belief.
  • "Faaip de Oiad"'s sample comes from a phone call taken on Coast to Coast AM from September 11, 1997. The Faceless also use that sample in "Planetary Duality."
• Tool songs fall under two categories, Mind Screw, or Nightmare Fuel. The best ones do both, with often incredibly disturbing results. Take for example, "Disgustipated" from Undertow.
  • The opening track of Undertow, "Intolerance", is just as bad. It's supposed to sound like someone running out of oxygen underwater.
  • In regards to "Disgustipated"...well...: "This is necessary, this is necessary, life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on, and it goes on and on and on...
• "Viginti Tres" from 10,000 Days is another good addition to the list of creepy last tracks.
  • The most notable moment is when suddenly, out of nowhere, a loud voice suddenly starts playing over the staticy sounds. A quite effective jump scare to say the least.
• "Prison Sex." While the original song is certainly more than enough to qualify for Nightmare Fuel, it's the music video that is truly disturbing. Try watching it without feeling disturbed.
  • Tool's music videos are always freaky and disturbing, but for the most part ("Sober", "Ænema", "Vicarious" etc) they're pretty abstract in what all the nightmare imagery represents. The reason "Prison Sex" has long provided the page image for the Nightmare Fuel page for music videos is that, despite its similarly surrealistic visuals, it's very much not. Every time the chorus hits and the black figure descends on the white doll, that's a blatant and undisguised visual representation of a child being raped!
  • The lyrics of "Prison Sex" initially appear to be told from the perspective of someone who simply suffered from child abuse, but then the second verse comes along and you realize it's being told by a child abuse victim...who ends up becoming a child abuser themselves:
    My lamb and martyr, you look so precious
    Won't you come a bit closer
    Close enough so I can smell you
    I need you to feel this
    I can't stand to burn too long
    Released in this sodomy
    For one sweet moment I am whole
• Listening to "Die Eier Von Satan" for the first time can be intimidating: The incredibly dissonant guitar noises, backward drums, and vocals in a Hitler-esque German voice. Until you find out what he is saying in English: it's just a German recipe for hash cookies. On top of that, the title in German may also mean "Satan's Balls".
  • What about the interlude "Cesaro Summability"? God. It opens with a bunch of ear-assaulting baby screams, followed by dissonant guitar noises and talking.
• The music video for "Schism". Words alone fail to do it justice.
• "Third Eye" is terrifying. From the false buildups in the first 3 minutes, to the stoned howls of "PRYING OPEN MY THIRD EYE" and the chants of "I opened my eye, and there we were" are just like a nightmarish lullaby. I can only imagine what it sounds like stoned.
• "Useful Idiot" was set at the end of the Ænima vinyl's side 1 and the run-in groove of side 2 as a prank on that record's owners. However, in the wrong setting, it feels like it just might cut into a jump scare...
• "Sober": Which looks like a video about a person living in a haunted house (though that's putting it mildly).

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