Opiate [EP]

Tool: Maynard James Keenan (vocals); Adam Jones (guitar); Paul D'Amour (bass); Danny Carey (drums).
Producers: Sylvia Massy, Steve Hansgen, Tool.
Recorded at: Sound City, Van Nuys, California and live at Jello Loft, Hollywood, California on December 31, 1991.
In retrospect, Opiate seems a little haphazard, but it's possible to hear the seeds of Tool's bleak, cerebral metal in such cuts as "Sweat" and "Opiate." The two live tracks, "Cold and Ugly" and "Jerk-Off," don't sound out of place, since they share Tool's characteristic undertow of gloom and doom and the EP as a whole points toward the ground the group explored in Undertow and Ænima. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine