Tool
Pull a thread
Use Your Illusion and Ænima: September 17, Five Years Apart, and What Rock Did in Between
On September 17, 1991, Guns N’ Roses released two albums at midnight and sold about 1.45 million copies in a week. On September 17, 1996, Tool released one album with a painting on the cover and a comedian at the center of the title track. It is the same date on the calendar, and the gap between them is the story of 1990s rock.
Midnight, September 17, 1991
Guns N’ Roses released two albums that Tuesday. Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II went on sale at midnight, on Geffen, and record shops stayed open to sell them. Thirty songs across the pair. Illusion I alone runs 16 tracks and 76 minutes and 9 seconds, which is roughly as much music as a CD could physically hold at the time.
Tool's Ænima at 30: the vinyl remaster Danny Carey said was done in 2024 still isn't out
Ænima turns 30 on September 17. The band remastered it, the drummer heard it on vinyl, Maynard’s wife keeps a test pressing at home. You cannot buy it. If that feels familiar, you have been a Tool fan for a while.
The record came out on vinyl first
The birthday everyone is counting toward is a vinyl birthday. Tool released Ænima as a double LP on September 17, 1996, and the CD followed two weeks later, on October 1 (Discogs; theprp, 26 Nov 2025).