When I was an angry, impressionable young thing, I would get Tool's "Ænema" stuck in my head for days at a time. It's ridiculously earwormy for a prog metal track, not to mention it echoed plenty of my frustrations with the state of modern capitalism (at least as far as my teenage understanding of it went). The song might be partially responsible for my continued preoccupation with the apocalypse, as well as my longstanding cynical conviction that the end of the world is the only way anyone's going to be able to fix America. Tool's preferred apocalyptic prediction is another great flood; Maynard chants "learn to swim" at the climax of Ænema, as though dog paddling would save us from the torrents. 

Like most of Tool's videos, Ænema features a gorgeously surreal atmosphere and some impressive stop motion animation. It would seem an artistic frustration with Los Angeles drives filmmakers and musicians to create thematically unified art; at points during the video, I'm reminded of David Lynch's disturbingly surreal feature film Mulholland Drive. Maybe it's all the blue lighting and weird little shriveled dudes being tortured by men in suits. Enjoy this angry nightmare of a video after the jump.