Lateralus emerged after a five-year legal dispute with
Tool's label, V
olcano Entertainment. In January 2001, the band announced that their new album's title would be
Systema Encéphale and provided a 12-song tracklist with titles such as "
Riverchrist", "
Numbereft", "
Encephatalis", "
Musick", and "
Coeliacus". File-sharing networks such as Napster were flooded with bogus files bearing the titles' names. At the time,
Tool members were outspokenly critical of file-sharing networks in general due to the negative impact on artists that are dependent on success in record sales to continue their career. Keenan had this to say during an interview with
NY Rock in 2000, "I think there are a lot of other industries out there that might deserve being destroyed. The ones who get hurt by MP3s are not so much companies or the business, but the artists, people who are trying to write songs." A month later, the band revealed that the new album was actually titled
Lateralus (supposedly named in combination with the words "Vastus lateralis", a human leg muscle and lateral thinking) and that the name
Systema Encéphale and the tracklist had been a ruse.
Lateralus and the corresponding tours would take Tool a step further toward art-rock and progressive rock territory. Rolling Stone wrote in an attempt to summarize the album that "Drums, bass and guitars move in jarring cycles of hyperhowl and ...
